Top Vhembe soccer clubs may move soon
The three Vhembe-based teams playing in the GladAfrica league are considering moving their home matches elsewhere, due to the high rent charged by the Thulamela Municipality for using the facility.
LIMPOPO – This season the Vhembe district has three teams competing in the GladAfrica Championship, namely Black Leopards, Venda Football Academy (VFA) and Tshakhuma Tsha Madzivhandila (TTM). The three teams are supposed to share the Thohoyandou Stadium as their home ground.
The teams can apparently not afford the R27 795 they have to pay for the use of the Thohoyandou Stadium per match. With Covid-19 restrictions still in place, spectators are not allowed at matches and the teams have limited options available to increase their income.
The three teams are apparently considering to rather use the Peter Mokaba Stadium as their home ground for the season, where the rental is only R5 000 per match.
Black Leopards have already forfeited their home ground advantage the past weekend and their match against Polokwane City was moved to the Peter Mokaba Stadium. This match ended in a 1-all draw.
Black Leopards’ communication manager Tshifhiwa Thidiela said that they had written many letters to the municipality, trying to meet with them and discuss the issue, but they have not received any response.
He said the current situation in the country causes them to play in an empty stadium, which costs the team a lot of money.
“There are a lot of issues that come with renting the stadium,” said Thidiela.
He said that in 2018 when his team returned to the elite league, the PSL ruled that the Thohoyandou Stadium was unfit to host league matches. They quickly had to pay R50 000 for the maintenance of the stadium and had to search for sponsors to pay more than R700 000 to renovate the stadium.
Thidiela said the Thulamela Municipality has seemingly forgotten what had happened in the past. He criticised the municipality for regarding sport clubs to be the same as local vendors.
“In other provinces teams are given money by their municipalities and are not paying a cent for the rental of stadiums. In our local municipality, we pay,” he said.
Thulamela municipality’s manager for Sport, Arts, and Culture Ronald Makhadi, said that they have reduced the rent for the stadium given the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Three teams have shown interest in making use of our facility, but I cannot guarantee that they will all make use of it,” he said.
Makhadi explained that the municipality has already allowed 36% discount for the teams, taking into consideration that most of the games are being played behind closed doors. After the discount the rental is R27 795, which means that the “normal” rent would be just over R43 400. The rent for Makwarela Stadium is R24 321 and for Makonde and Makhuvha stadiums R10 423, Makhadi said.
Makhadi added that they cannot afford to further reduce the tariffs. He said that they are in the process of trying to find sponsors to assist the three teams to pay rent at the stadium.
For the time being it seems as if there is a good chance that the three teams will move to the Peter Mokaba Stadium where they will share the stadium with Polokwane City.
This may mean that no professional football matches will be played this season at the Thohoyandou Stadium.
