This is not a game any more, it could be play or bust for the PSL

The South African Football Association, for one, are very busy, telling us at every opportunity that their referees are getting ready to go for a season restart, while also fending off allegations that Safa president Danny Jordaan has now been reported to the Fifa Ethics Committee.

It won’t surprise me if he has. I mean, they say there is no smoke without fire, and there has been so much smoke around Jordaan in recent years that it is surprising he hasn’t collapsed from carbon monoxide poisoning.

But let’s not dwell there, let’s take a look at the season restart and all the complications surrounding it. The referees may well be ready soon for an August 1 kick off, but it still remains to be seen if the PSL give the green light for it all to get underway, or decide to cancel the season completely.

The league have, totally understandably, decided to delay their latest Board of Governors meeting to Monday in the light of the news that PSL chairman Dr Irvin Khoza’s second wife, Matina Khoza, tragically passed away this week.

However, by Monday, August 1 will be closer still, and it will be interesting to see whether the league do give the go ahead to start next Saturday, or announce a different restart date, or, indeed, decide to declare the 2019/20 season null and void.

It is clear that the economic devastation caused to club football in this country by cancelling the season and potentially losing sponsorship revenue and television money would be catastrophic. Indeed, it is the main reason that the league are desperate to get the campaign going again, even in the middle of an escalating health crisis in South Africa.

Let’s be honest, why would they really play the English Premier League, La Liga, the Bundesliga or Serie A to a finish in the middle of a global pandemic, unless it was about the money?

Pitso Mosimane’s quotes on Sundowns training tell you all you need to know about how imperfect starting the season is, and how, in a world where football finances could be protected, in the light of the COVID-19 pandemic there would be no need to go into a Biologically Safe Environment in Gauteng, and get this over and done with as quickly as possible.

And yet, the possibility of football as we know sinking like the Titanic is real, so here we are. This is a business and needs to be able to run, like all other businesses that have been given the green light to open up.

So many jobs in football are at stake, and plenty have already been lost, no more so than at Bidvest Wits, who will be retrenching so many members their staff at the end of next month. I am not sure I have ever seen a club’s legacy effectively ended in such a heartless manner, and those at Bidvest have plenty to answer for, not that they will in the land of unaccountability that is South Africa.

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