Reach out and don't touch it. Kaizer Chiefs and Mamelodi Sundowns seem to be doing their utmost not to win the Absa Premiership. ©Muzi Ntombela/BackpagePix
In Gauteng on Wednesday, the last vestiges of a winter of COVID-19 discontent were still blowing in the September air. We could do more than ever with spring showing its sunny warm face for good, for heavy rains to feed the dried up earth, and for someone, please someone, to grab this title race by the balls and run with it.
READ MORE: Sundowns entering last-chance saloon in roller-coaster title race.
It’s all very well calling the tussle for the 2019/20 Absa Premiership title race exciting, because Kaizer Chiefs and Mamelodi Sundowns are tied on points at the top of the table with two games to go. But to be honest, it all loses it’s allure when the two teams involved are pissing in the wind, doing their utmost, it seems, not to haul themselves over the winning line.
Imagine this. You are watching a crime series, or in a more modern manner, listening to a crime podcast, and you still don’t know who committed the crime. Frankly, however, you are beyond the point of caring, because the series/podcast is so full of plot holes, the acting/reporting is so weak, that who has done the deed has become largely irrelevant.
For some reason, you have carried on watching/listening, but you know you could be doing something far more stimulating, like trying to peel the chocolate layer of the top of a Jaffa Cake with your teeth, or spending a day out avoiding all the cracks in the pavement.
That is how this Absa Premiership title race currently feels, like a film crawling to an end with acting that ain’t winning no Oscars. When Liverpool and Manchester City raced each other to the wire for the 2018/19 English Premier League title, winning game, after game, after game, after game, that was enthralling, two teams at the peak of their powers going toe-to-toe, like two heavyweight boxers.
Kaizer Chiefs and Sundowns? They don’t look like they could punch their way out a paper-bag right now, let alone the bio-bubble.
We know it’s hard, returning from a long break and trying to finish the season in a short period of time. But Amakhosi? Five points from six games since the season resumed? Really? And Sundowns? Nine points from seven games since the season resumed? Still not even close to good enough.
Perhaps it would just be better for everyone if Chiefs and Sundowns both fall apart at the seams completely, and Wits to win their last two games and snatch an unlikely crown in the very last match of their current existence (in the PSL franchise system, I have little doubt Wits will bounce back in another form at some point). It would be a fitting way for the players and management of the Clever Boys to finish, especially given the callous way the owners of the club have treated its sale.
Now there would be a Hollywood ending to enjoy, not Chiefs and Sundowns skidding in the dirt, and falling face first over the finish line, with the race only decided by who happens to slide fortuitously furthest forward in the mud.
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