League postponement leaves more questions

So the start the Namibia Premier League (NPL) has been postponed for a week. Instead of this weekend being filled with local league action, we shall now wait until September 28 for the teams to resume a league that has been in hibernation for the past three months.

I can’t say I’m not disappointed. In fact I’m actually depressed by this turn of events, because I’m tired of attributing negativity to the NPL.

I can’t remember the last time the league actually started on time and I was secretly hoping this year will be an exception. Instead, ‘unforeseen circumstances’ have once again resulted in a delay.

This song has been sung ever since I came of age and it seems it will continue to be sung well past my prime, unless the administrators start walking the talk and not just talking the talk. How many times have we heard we are moving into a different way of doing things, only to have the same things happening again?

Sometimes I feel that dream of turning local football into a professional product is nothing but a pipedream. Take last week’s ‘League Cup’ for example. Is that really what the NPL had in mind when they put the event on their provisional fixture list?

When you look at that list, the League Cup Final is slated for December 15. That means the initial plan was to have a tournament that runs until that date and not just a preseason tournament, which runs for a weekend as is now the case.

This clearly shows there is a discrepancy in what the NPL promises and what it actually delivers at the end of the day.

Furthermore, according to the NPL the main reason for the postponement was because a new player registration system has been introduced and teams were not familiar with the system.

All I’m asking is that - since the league ended in May - why wasn’t this new system put in place during the three inactive months, instead of three weeks before the league was due to start?