PSL chairman Dr Irvin Khoza has revealed that the Kaizer Chiefs postponement matter has been handed over to its legal divisions, while also announcing a programme to assist players with setting themselves up for retirement.

At the beginning of December, Chiefs failed to show for a number of games after a Covid-19 outbreak despite no indication that the league would postpone the games.

The matter has seemingly dragged on with no clear idea of whether the games will be rescheduled or if the points would be awarded to the opposition teams, who had arrived for the match as scheduled despite the Chiefs no-show.

It now looks that it may still be a while before clear answers are given as Khoza said the issue has been on to the organisation’s legal divisions.

“There’s a big debate saying this matter of Kaizer Chiefs took too long,” Khoza said.

“It took too long because of the complexity around the matter, which necessitated that there must be information gathering to enable us to establish a process.

“The PSL fixtures affects a lot of people and stakeholders and if a fixture is not met there must be uniformity in dealing with those matters.

“The PSL is also a member organisation with its rules but, also if there are problems, there must be furnace on the part of the PSL.

“When we deal with a matter we must accommodate the members and not use the rules punitively.

“When we received the request to postpone certain fixtures it was a matter handled by the football department, who has the authority and not the executive committee.

“The compliance manual dictates that the football department is the one with the authority to change fixtures. Having done that, we sat for the matter on 3 December after Chiefs wrote to us on 2 December for consideration of the December fixtures.”

Khoza supplied greater details on the current state of the matter between Chiefs and the league, with a final decision pending.

“As an executive committee, we rejected Chiefs’ initial request with the matter now being handled by the various legal departments.

“I hear through the media that there might be future issues such as appeals and things like that; we all know that every administrative decision is reviewable.

“Therefore it’s not easy for me to talk about the details as if the process is still ongoing – it will only be fair that I hold back information to give the process a chance to reach its final conclusion.

“We did that with the Sekhukhune United and Royal AM decision with pressure from the media, but we cannot make a running commentary on an ongoing matter.”

The league is set to resume on 15 February after a festive break over December.

At the same media conference, Khoza also announced a new programme – in partnership with MultiChoice – to be launched for assisting players when they’ve retired from football. This is open only to players between the ages of 28-35, and contracted to their clubs.

Knowing that the career of a football player is short, the PSL is ensuring that they will be ready for the reality of life after football by empowering players with the knowledge required to handle the transition from playing to a role in sport after retirement.

The PSL has communicated with clubs that the programme will be open to top-flight clubs and will include GladAfrica Championship outfits in its second year of operation.

The Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) has been selected as the educational partners for the programme, to ensure players are fully equipped with knowledge of life after the beautiful game. The programme will run for six months, starting from 19 January.