Cape Town - The Premier Soccer League (PSL) were caught with their pants down when chaos erupted at Danie Craven Stadium, the Stellenbosch venue which hosted Sunday’s MTN8 quarter-final between Stellenbosch FC and Kaizer Chiefs.
On Sunday, the PSL announced that all the tickets at the 16 000-seat stadium had been snapped up for the game. It was the third time this season that the PSL had the “sold out” signs up just hours before kickoff.
Heavy traffic congestion meant that many fans were late for the 3pm start. When PSL officials became aware of that, it was decided to allow 15 minutes of grace to accommodate the late fans. A new kick-off time of 3.15pm was announced.
The problem continued to prevail and eventually the match started at 3.30pm.
In the meantime, several ticketless fans mulled around the stadium entrances, and eventually they found a way to breach the security. This would have taken the PSL security by complete surprise because they usually go to great lengths to ensure that security is adequate.
Over the years, the PSL has had several bad experiences when security was not up to scratch. However, in recent years there have hardly been any such issues.
In the 1980s and ’90s, Cape Town venues like Hartleyvale and Athlone Stadium had their fair share of problems and on occasions, riot police were called in to restore control. Teargas was fired in some instances.
PSL media relations manager Fhatuwani Mpfuni said the administrative body would not issue a statement on the chaos that erupted at Stellenbosch.
Courtney Williams, the media liaison and communications officer at Stellenbosch, meanwhile, said that the Danie Craven Stadium is fully compliant as determined by the PSL and that the PSL could not be held accountable.
“The organisation of this game is done by the league,” Williams said.
“Not that the league did anything wrong or not that the security (hired by the PSL), did anything wrong. Sometimes spectators do want they want to do.”
Once hundreds of fans without tickets streamed into the venue after climbing over barriers and fencing to gain access illegally, chaos erupted soon thereafter.
From video footage that made the rounds of the pre-match breach, security personnel stood by helplessly and were unable to stop the surge of raucous spectators into the venue.
There was also the problem of inadequate fencing inside the stadium, and it was unable to stop spectators from running onto the field during and after the clash.
Footage showed spectators scaling boundary fences easily to run onto the field.
It is not unlike the PSL to keep quiet on matters of importance, and one will have to speculate on the consequences for those who are responsible for lapses in security.
It could also mean that the Danie Craven Stadium could be off limits for future Chiefs matches with Amakhosi games safely staged at Athlone Stadium or Cape Town Stadium instead.
@Herman_Gibbs