Putting the PSL in the picture

Zikie & Ronnie... sounds like a duet, and this week they acted like one as the pair slagged off Cape Town as a football venue.

Zikie Molusi, a marketing man with Telkom, said that if he had his way Cape Town would host no more Telkom Cup ties as the city had "bastardised" his company's product. His reason was only 1 300 fans turned up to watch the recent Ajax Cape Town-Golden Arrows tie at Green Point.

The Premier League's chief operations officer Ronnie Schloss was banging the same drum when asked the crowd attendances for the first round of the Telkom Cup.

"The figures are all very good, except for Cape Town," Schloss blurted out. "So far it's over 100 000." But Schloss was unable to give a breakdown of attendances, other than what he called "ball-park" figures for games played on the weekend of October 28-29. "There were about 32 000 at the Chiefs-Wits game and plus-minus 12 000 at Sundowns-AmaZulu."

All the figures were not available, he said, because first-round ties were only completed last weekend and that he'd been busy preparing for this weekend's PSL AGM.

Three months ago Schloss was at pains to point out clubs are under no obligation to divulge their gates for league games and the PSL had no control over the matter.

But cup competitions were a different matter. "We run the gate at cup games and make sure the takings are divided proportionally between clubs."

Problem is, of course, where are the crowd figures - and gate takings for that matter - for ties such as Jomo Cosmos against Santos and Silver Stars versus Bloemfontein Celtic which were played almost two weeks ago?

Just for Schloss's information 7 881 watched the Black Leopards-SuperSport United match at Thohoyandou Stadium, and 11 000 went through the gates at Chatsworth to watch Martizburg play Pirates, both games were played six days ago.

And to put the Telkom man in the picture, about 600 (310 bought tickets) were at the Cosmos-Santos match in Katlehong, so why in the name of the soccer gods did Molusi bleat about Cape Town?

Durban's Chatsworth Stadium has a capacity of 22 000 and Maritzburg were the victims of a "forced removal" when the PSL dictated they play Pirates 90km from their Harry Gwala Stadium home base

Schloss and his committee refused to listen to Maritzburg's protests that the 14 000 capacity Harry Gwala would easily cater for the expected crowd. The previous weekend close to 4 000 were at Germiston when Moroka Swallows hosted Benoni Premier.

So adding all the "ball-park" numbers with Thohoyandou's official gate and Katlehong's pathetic turnout you have around 68 781 for seven games.

Which means Silver Stars and Bloemfontein Celtic pulled a crowd of around 31 000 if Schloss's 100 000 total is accurate.