Simon Murray becomes latest PSL player out of SA amid lockdown

Bidvest Wits striker Simon Murray is one of the PSL players who managed to exit South Africa before Friday’s national lockdown.

The Scottish marksman played just six minutes of football in the current season before a cruciate ligament injury halted his progress.

Simon Murray leaves Bidvest Wits

His only appearance of the campaign for the Clever Boys came during the end of the July-August transfer window and, in that period, the club managed to bring in another strike option in the form of Cameroon’s Eva Nga’ Bienvenu.

Murray revealed that he and Wits have decided to terminate his contract.

“Because there’s a limit on the number of foreign players over here‚ the club signed another forward when I was injured and he took my place so we’ve come to an agreement to terminate my contract‚” Murray told the Evening Telegraph.

“The club have been really good‚ to be honest – they’ve made sure I got through the injury and looked after me during rehab.

“The plan was to stay here in South Africa‚ get the rehab done and recover from the injury and then head back to Scotland in the summer but because of all this coronavirus‚ it is up in the air.”

Simon Murray

COVID-19 prompts tough decisions out of PSL foreign legion

Murray’s debut season in South Africa yielded 27 appearances across competitions, where he managed eight goals and two assists.

He now becomes the latest PSL players to opt-out of South Africa ahead of the lockdown, following Stellenbosch FC’s Boy de Jong, who took one of the last flights to the Netherlands earlier in the week.

The goalkeeper says he had to make a tough decision on whether to fly out or remain in South Africa.

“Hopefully, in the future I can find something else – maybe I can come back to South Africa, but first, we have to kill the virus,” he said.

Boy de Jong

The PSL is on hold in the wake of the rapid spread of the COVID-19, and is in a race against time to finish before the scheduled start of the next season.