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Grace Chingoma
Senior Sports Reporter
CASTLE Lager Premier Soccer League chief executive Kenny Ndebele believes this season was competitive enough considering the fact that clubs were coming from a disruptive Covid-19 period.
The league, which ended on Sunday, started last year in November after two seasons without top-flight football.
Only the Chibuku Super Cup tournament was played last year.
Upon its resumption, top-flight football found out that it was no longer business as usual as the number of fans dropped drastically.
“We started in November, took a break and resumed early this year.
“The league was competitive in terms of championship and relegation teams. Teams like Whawha and Tenax offered competition up to the last day of the competition.
“The championship race was up to a certain level, the competition was there before FC Platinum managed to win the league title with some games to spare,” said Ndebele
“We are coming from Covid, to be honest from directions and guidelines there was no time we were told we can allow fans to come.
“Remember, we started at empty stadium regulation, and then we were allowed 30 percent capacity, that directive never changed. Covid had an impact and the fact that regulations were never changed and people were just coming to the stadia,” said Ndebele.
However, the league fathers say they will use the off-season period to engage on their key stakeholders, the fans on how they can improve their product.
“The culture has changed and people have other interests but I don’t want to speak on behalf of the customers or speculate whether it is Covid or football or other factors.
“But coming from a Covid period it was unique so starting afresh had its impact. We also did record some good figures, especially at Barbourfields.
“We will be engaging a lot with the client and getting feedback from them. We will use the off-season time to engage with the fans.
“Even a baker would want to improve, any service provider would want to improve. We will certainly look at it.
“This weekend we have a Cup final and instead of US$3 for the rest of the ground, we are charging US$1 and US$2 for the grandstand,” said Ndebele.
In terms of stadia, the league boss says next season they must avoid over-reliance on the National Sports Stadium.
This season almost all the Harare teams were using the giant facility.
Luckily for the league fathers, there were no mid-week games.
“In terms of fixture programming, it was easy since there were no international matches. This would have given us a torrid time but the fixtures were not congested.
“Going forward, we will have to plan to have more stadia and will have to approach the City of Harare on Rufaro.
“If we get Rufaro back and someone works with Zimbabwe Republic Police for Morris Depot, we should be able to decongest the National Sports Stadium.
“It would also be nice for owners of the stadia and clubs to work together and secure lease agreements.
“We hope the newly-promoted teams will offer some venues in terms of approval,” said Ndebele.
Turning to other aspects of the administration of the game this season, Ndebele said it was good.
“Overall, discipline wise, we were satisfied. Remember we are organising almost 320 matches. Although we still have issues with one or two clubs. But overall it (discipline) was good,” said Ndebele.
The veteran administrator, however, implored clubs to continuously implement the club licencing system which is the gateway to professionalism.
“We have had all those achievements, we still need to get back to the club licensing system so that we structure our clubs accordingly and implement the policy,” he said.
Ndebele feels that clubs must strive to satisfy some of the requirements from the pillars of the club licencing system. The club licencing system has five pillars thus personnel and administrative, financial, infrastructure and legal.
Ndebele feels there is a need to revisit aspects such as youth development programmes with clubs having approved youth development plans.
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