Promotional playoffs are now haunting the PSL

A small change in their system that the PSL has been urged to make for a long time now has come back to bite them. I don’t know how many pundits, coaches and players have tried to appeal to the PSL to change their relegation/promotion system and use the normal and widely used one where two teams are relegated from the top flight, and two promoted from the first division.

The PSL endorsed and adopted a system of play-offs where the team who finish 15th in the Absa Premiership, gets a second chance at survival by playing the playoffs with the teams who finished second and third in the GladAfrica Championship. This has been going on for a while despite protests.

One of its disadvantages is that it is unfair to a team who worked hard for 3o games, and lost out on the number one spot in the Championship division by a few points, to be denied a chance at top flight football by being forced into the playoffs against a Premiership team.

Most teams from the top flight have managed to win the playoffs and make a U-turn to the Premiership. This system is anti-Championship teams.

Second disadvantage is that the team who eventually win the play-offs have less time to prepare for the season because while other teams are on a break, they are playing important games which need their total focus. 

I can’t think of any advantages at the moment (may be deliberate) and this system now poses a potentially difficult PSL. With the current uncertainty over whether the PSL will be able to finish any of their leagues this season after they were stopped due to the outbreak of the coronavirus, there might come a time where they have to make a decision to declare winners from the way things stood when the games were paused in early March.

Or they can scrap (which is almost unlikely) the entire season and start afresh next term. But if they are to declare winners, they would now have a problem with the relegation/promotion scenario. 

This decision will naturally face some resistance and complaints about it being unfair because there were still at least six more games to play, in which those teams who were gunning for the championship or trying to move away from the dreaded axe could have still done something. 

Now added to that, there is this play-offs conundrum. And it looks unavoidable because even if the season were to be completed, that could be in August, which means the play-offs would have to be staged in September. 

Now with time not on their side to start a new season, this will be a big inconvenience again for the league. The teams who will play in the play-offs will be greatly inconvenienced. 

The introduction of this system of relegation/promotion is one of those decisions that one understands, but they leave a bitter aftertaste that lingers on and on… just like the one to scrap the once popular Charity Cup.

But I am sure these are all issues that the decisionmakers are handling and will make pronouncements on pretty soon. They can’t be blamed for this anyway, as it was something they could never have predicted nor foreseen. This Covid-19 has messed up everybody’s plans and forces every industry to adjust the way they do things. Football is also facing the same problems.