You want to watch Soweto Derby, and then what after?

It has long been said that you cannot shoot the messenger if you are unhappy about the message they bring. Rather go for the person who sent the messenger. 

But I will buck this today. I say shoot the messenger. And that messenger is me, so shoot me. I know many of you are itching to do that anyway, but before you do, please hear me out. 

I say this because I am about to tell you something that you are likely not to like as a football supporter. I have heard of a planned march by supporters to try and disrupt this afternoon’s Soweto derby at Orlando Stadium to demand that they be allowed back into the stadiums. 

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The fans had a similar march in Durban last weekend. It is noble isn’t it? It has been over two years now that we have had to watch football without the fans, and while it was unbearable at the beginning watching “practise matches”, we have gotten used to it. 

And the players seem to have also adjusted a little. But I recently stumbled upon a study done on supporter attendances across the world. The study was done on the big leagues in all continents and as South Africa we are counted among those. 

What they found is that FNB Stadium takes close to 90 000 supporters but on a normal day where Kaizer Chiefs are not playing Orlando Pirates at that venue, they get around 16 000 if it is a good day. They can get just 6  000 sometimes. 

The same happens with Pirates at Orlando where they don’t get even half of the stadium capacity on a normal game day. When you go to Mamelodi Sundowns, you find a similar situation. 

Then there are teams who should celebrate when they get 500 people to watch their games. The lack of supporters at stadiums here is a problem that we had before Covid-19 forced us out. This is perhaps why club owners are not in a rush to get the venues opened. 

I know that the same fans who are complaining will not attend the matches when it is open. And I bet even this protest action only came about because they wanted to watch the derby. And as soon as the derby is gone, they will forget and go about their normal lives again. 

One even wonders sometimes if it is worth the expense for clubs to open their venues for supporters when the gate takings hardly cover the security expenses. 

Now, I am not saying the stadiums must not be opened, but we also need to look at ourselves and realise that we had not given these clubs much to encourage them to push for the return of supporters. 

In fact, I could say that this situation benefits the clubs – the smaller ones that is – because they have their games on TV more often now. And that helps them financially because they need the money which they will not get with gate takings, unless they are hosting one of the three big Gauteng teams. 

These supporters are just paying lip service, they want to go to the stadiums only because they are not allowed to. Once they are allowed, the excitement will disappear and we will be back to watching football with hundred supporters on the stands.