It has been confirmed that no team in the Premier Soccer League will be able to use their primary home stadium as their ‘home venue’ for the completion of the 2019/20 domestic campaign.
The domestic season will resume action on August 08 and while teams will continue where they left off on the fixture list, the biggest change will be the different home venues allocated to each team.
The PSL will conduct a draw on Wednesday to determine the home venues for all 32 member clubs in the biologically safe environment in Gauteng.
According to the information made available to the Siya crew, Eight stadiums have been allocated for top flight teams, while another eight will be used for the GladAfrica Championship sides.
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This means that two teams will share a home venue/stadium and in the event that both their fixtures are scheduled to be played at ‘home’ on the same day, it may be accommodated by a double-header.
However, the entire draw procedure will prioritise the teams who are scheduled to play at ‘home’ on the final day of the season, as all matches need to kick off at the same time.
“The problem is that in the final round of fixtures, which must be played simultaneously, there can easily be two teams with home fixtures who share a home stadium. Because they cannot play at different times, the only option would be that some teams would not be able to play at their home grounds. Being the most important fixtures of the whole league programme, this would be unfair. This problem can be avoided for certain by considering the final block of fixtures when doing the draw,” a communique by the PSL read in part.
“To do this, we will draw up a list of the 8 Premier Division teams that are at home in the last round. Then we will do a draw where each of these teams will draw one of the 8 stadiums. Next, we will do another draw where each of the remaining 8 Premier Division teams will draw a stadium from 1 to 8.”
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“In each of these draws, if a team draws its normal home stadium this is not allowed, so that ball will be put aside, and another stadium drawn. Then the ball that was put aside will be put back in the bowl. If this happens when the last stadium is drawn, the stadiums of the last and the second last team will be swapped in order to ensure that no team has its normal home stadium.”
“The same process will then be repeated for the NFD teams, again considering the final block of fixtures.”