How to write about no football at all

Or you write about old football. There was one international website this week that was doing ‘live’ online play-by-play match reports on games that happened a long time ago. That’s wildly inventive, or mildly insane, whichever you prefer.

On the home front, SuperSport TV have been reduced to re-runs of old games in every sport, though at least they have such footage to call on.

At Phakaaathi, we have had to take stock and make a decision on what we are going to do with our Tuesday print supplement, until the season is up-and-running again. Twelve pages on football’s past or no football’s present is, I’m sure you’ll agree, a little over-the-top, so we have reduced our offering to four pages for now, two from our friends at Phumulela, and two from our own stable.

For Friday’s Phakaaathi Plus, for the time being, you can expect exactly the same, but fear not, our online publication will keep you up to date with any news these pages may miss. Keep visiting phakaaathi.co.za for More Soccer. Your Way.

As the days go by, and the coronavirus rate in South Africa continues to rise, it does seem less and less likely that the Premier Soccer League season will ever resume. The financial impact of this would be serious, never mind us poor souls whose mental well-being relies on live sport. But the health of everyone in the face of the coronavirus threat has to take precedence. So the Premier Soccer League took the correct step at the end of last week by postponing all football until further notice.

It is hard to know when the season will be back, and I have to agree with Roger De Sa, on this very page, when he says it looks likely the 2019/20 campaign will have to be shut down for good. The PSL task team met yesterday to talk about how we might get underway again, but how do you set a date in these troubled times? What if you set a date and play, and there is a serious coronavirus outbreak as a result? The only way you can really operate right now is to follow the global trend, and that is to shut down all football, even the idea of playing games behind closed doors. It would be reckless to do anything else, and government legislation only seems likely to get tighter and tighter on mass gatherings.

So all we can really do for now is reminisce, or engage in weird social media football games, or play Fifa ’20 until the skin has disappeared from our thumbs. Or watch endless replays on SuperSport. There is, after all, a long history of sport to remind us of what once was.

One day, sport as we know it will return, I am certain, as will a 12-page Phakaaathi, in all its glory. For now, I hope you enjoy this shortened version, as we look to keep you entertained, and hopefully in good humour, in these strange times.

For more news your way, download The Citizen’s app for iOS and Android.