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Rob Houwing
At last, a chance to clear some cobwebs and dust from the seats … but from just how many of them? That, of course, will be incredibly instructive in the campaign to curb much-publicised “white elephant” fears.
I refer to the looming use, after rather depressing dormancy of several weeks, of at least two of the built-from-scratch venues for soccer’s World Cup, the beautiful Mbombela Stadium in Nelspruit and the bigger Cape Town Stadium.
The “Mbombela” was last used for the group match between North Korea and Ivory Coast on June 25 and springs back into focus with two pretty decent attractions: the Absa Currie Cup rugby match between the Pumas and Blue Bulls on Friday night, followed by next Saturday’s African Nations Cup qualifier between Bafana Bafana and Niger.
The latter will be the first competitive match for new national coach Pitso Mosimane, buoyed by a 1-0 friendly outcome against Ghana at Soccer City.
Nelspruit has no PSL side, which was always going to be a handicap in terms of the stadium’s long-term sustainability, so hats off to SAFA for giving the friendly folk of the booming Lowveld capital a Bafana opportunity – I fervently hope the locals respond by turning out in rosy numbers at the atmospheric ground which has a sensible, manageable capacity of just over 40 000.
With the Pumas ailing on the Currie Cup table and more traditionally Witbank-based anyway – perhaps the much closer proximity to Johannesburg of the latter makes sense for them – you would not expect the ground to be too heavily populated for the visit of the Bulls, albeit that the champions have good support broadly in the more “northern” areas of our country.
A good sign, though, was the VIP suites for the rugby match being sold out on the first day they were offered.
The soft, rolling hills and pleasant winter climate of the Lowveld make Nelspruit a very desirable location, I think, for significant sports events, given the opportunity to “make a weekend of it”.
It would be wonderful (and hopefully reap good rewards) if a Springbok Test against, say, Argentina or Scotland was earmarked for Mbombela in the not too distant future. Spreading the rugby gospel, and all that …
Admittedly my enthusiasm for the place is enhanced by the great buzz I experienced during a whistlestop visit for the compelling Chile-Honduras World Cup match there, when the local officials and volunteers went out of their way to be courteous and helpful and the municipality put out smart gift packs to the media rightly extolling the virtues of the region.
Cape Town Stadium, similarly, finally switches its lights on again on Friday - for the first time since the World Cup semi-final between Holland and Uruguay on July 6 - with a PSL season-opening double-header featuring local clubs Vasco da Gama and Ajax Cape Town against Orlando Pirates and Bloemfontein Celtic respectively.
There is a bid to resurrect a strong “Football Fridays” theme in the city (possibly a mini-throwback to the halcyon days of Cape Town City and Hellenic in the apartheid-era NFL) with the hope of united interest from the city’s various communities.
So this will be a revealing exercise, especially given that high rental fees have been mooted in some circles as a stumbling block to big events at the large venue.
Two things irk me about this maiden local soccer event at the ground which was mostly jam-packed and joyously throbbing during the World Cup -- the first being the crazy clash with a floodlit Currie Cup rugby match (WP v Cheetahs) at Newlands. Both events are being televised live on SuperSport channels.
I suppose there will be “official reasons” but I still find it desperately hard to fathom why simultaneous event-staging is occurring on such a red-letter date for Cape Town Stadium.
Oddly, all Currie Cup matches this weekend are being played on Friday night, leaving the Boks v Wallabies Test as the sole rugby attraction on Saturday (17:00): could the WP match not have been played early on Saturday afternoon, which tends to be more popular than Fridays with rugby fans anyway?
Another bugbear of mine is that, unless I have been looking in all the wrong places, there has been conspicuously little in the way of PR blitz around the first post-World Cup event at Cape Town Stadium.
Perhaps the City of Cape Town and stadium operators SAIL/Stadefrance have each been guilty of leaving the job to the other, but I expected local newspaper advertisements and posters to hit you like the proverbial sledgehammer, proclaiming a return to (or at least bold attempt at) the “magic” of the World Cup vibe in the stadium precinct.
If you go onto the City’s website, for example, greater click-on prominence is arguably still afforded to the now obsolete FIFA World Cup 2010.
I have many friends, not all of them devout followers of the PSL, who have been keen to attend the double-header, yet constantly asking me “when is it?”, and in some cases I have delivered the answer too late for them as alternative plans for Friday have intervened.
If there’s going to be a way in these uncertain times for the various SWC stadiums, surely there also needs to be a very strong will?
Rob is Sport24's chief writer
Disclaimer: Sport24 encourages freedom of speech and the expression of diverse views. The views of columnists published on Sport24 are therefore their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Sport24.
At last, a chance to clear some cobwebs and dust from the seats … but from just how many of them? That, of course, will be incredibly instructive in the campaign to curb much-publicised “white elephant” fears.
I refer to the looming use, after rather depressing dormancy of several weeks, of at least two of the built-from-scratch venues for soccer’s World Cup, the beautiful Mbombela Stadium in Nelspruit and the bigger Cape Town Stadium.
The “Mbombela” was last used for the group match between North Korea and Ivory Coast on June 25 and springs back into focus with two pretty decent attractions: the Absa Currie Cup rugby match between the Pumas and Blue Bulls on Friday night, followed by next Saturday’s African Nations Cup qualifier between Bafana Bafana and Niger.
The latter will be the first competitive match for new national coach Pitso Mosimane, buoyed by a 1-0 friendly outcome against Ghana at Soccer City.
Nelspruit has no PSL side, which was always going to be a handicap in terms of the stadium’s long-term sustainability, so hats off to SAFA for giving the friendly folk of the booming Lowveld capital a Bafana opportunity – I fervently hope the locals respond by turning out in rosy numbers at the atmospheric ground which has a sensible, manageable capacity of just over 40 000.
With the Pumas ailing on the Currie Cup table and more traditionally Witbank-based anyway – perhaps the much closer proximity to Johannesburg of the latter makes sense for them – you would not expect the ground to be too heavily populated for the visit of the Bulls, albeit that the champions have good support broadly in the more “northern” areas of our country.
A good sign, though, was the VIP suites for the rugby match being sold out on the first day they were offered.
The soft, rolling hills and pleasant winter climate of the Lowveld make Nelspruit a very desirable location, I think, for significant sports events, given the opportunity to “make a weekend of it”.
It would be wonderful (and hopefully reap good rewards) if a Springbok Test against, say, Argentina or Scotland was earmarked for Mbombela in the not too distant future. Spreading the rugby gospel, and all that …
Admittedly my enthusiasm for the place is enhanced by the great buzz I experienced during a whistlestop visit for the compelling Chile-Honduras World Cup match there, when the local officials and volunteers went out of their way to be courteous and helpful and the municipality put out smart gift packs to the media rightly extolling the virtues of the region.
Cape Town Stadium, similarly, finally switches its lights on again on Friday - for the first time since the World Cup semi-final between Holland and Uruguay on July 6 - with a PSL season-opening double-header featuring local clubs Vasco da Gama and Ajax Cape Town against Orlando Pirates and Bloemfontein Celtic respectively.
There is a bid to resurrect a strong “Football Fridays” theme in the city (possibly a mini-throwback to the halcyon days of Cape Town City and Hellenic in the apartheid-era NFL) with the hope of united interest from the city’s various communities.
So this will be a revealing exercise, especially given that high rental fees have been mooted in some circles as a stumbling block to big events at the large venue.
Two things irk me about this maiden local soccer event at the ground which was mostly jam-packed and joyously throbbing during the World Cup -- the first being the crazy clash with a floodlit Currie Cup rugby match (WP v Cheetahs) at Newlands. Both events are being televised live on SuperSport channels.
I suppose there will be “official reasons” but I still find it desperately hard to fathom why simultaneous event-staging is occurring on such a red-letter date for Cape Town Stadium.
Oddly, all Currie Cup matches this weekend are being played on Friday night, leaving the Boks v Wallabies Test as the sole rugby attraction on Saturday (17:00): could the WP match not have been played early on Saturday afternoon, which tends to be more popular than Fridays with rugby fans anyway?
Another bugbear of mine is that, unless I have been looking in all the wrong places, there has been conspicuously little in the way of PR blitz around the first post-World Cup event at Cape Town Stadium.
Perhaps the City of Cape Town and stadium operators SAIL/Stadefrance have each been guilty of leaving the job to the other, but I expected local newspaper advertisements and posters to hit you like the proverbial sledgehammer, proclaiming a return to (or at least bold attempt at) the “magic” of the World Cup vibe in the stadium precinct.
If you go onto the City’s website, for example, greater click-on prominence is arguably still afforded to the now obsolete FIFA World Cup 2010.
I have many friends, not all of them devout followers of the PSL, who have been keen to attend the double-header, yet constantly asking me “when is it?”, and in some cases I have delivered the answer too late for them as alternative plans for Friday have intervened.
If there’s going to be a way in these uncertain times for the various SWC stadiums, surely there also needs to be a very strong will?
Rob is Sport24's chief writer
Disclaimer: Sport24 encourages freedom of speech and the expression of diverse views. The views of columnists published on Sport24 are therefore their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Sport24.
