LET’S INCENTIVISE JABBED FANS

My dearest readers ...

South Africa, will today welcome back to the FNB stadium at least 2 000 fans for the Bafana Bafana/Ethiopia 2022 World Cup qualifier since March 2020.
The South African Football Association (SAFA) wants to use the Bafana Bafana game as a pilot project to see if fans can return to the stadium and help galvanise the vaccination exercise in that country.

While the Premier Soccer League (PSL) and SAFA are obviously not singing from the same hymn sheet on the issue, but one thing is certain that the SA football mother body sees this as an opportunity to incentivise fans who have taken the jab. SAFA President Danny Jordan, quoted by South Africa’s Sunday Times over the weekend, described the whole idea as ‘the beginning of the restoration of the football economy.’  

situation

Here at home, the situation is no different. For the past fortnight, the Eswatini Football Association (EFA) and the Premier League of Eswatini (PLE) have been on the road with some super fans to encourage the nation to take the jab under the banner of ‘tight marking COVID-19’. So far it has seen 2 500 people vaccinate. The PLE has even released a schedule for her members (teams) in a bid to get the numbers to at least 70 per cent of the population, which is the mark the Ministry of Health suggested could be enough to allow fans to get back into stadiums.

At the time of compiling this State-of-the-Nation-Sports-Address (SONSA) yesterday, we had only 210 432 fully vaccinated people in the country, which equates to 18.1 per cent of the population. This basically means we still have a long way to go. Obviously the uptake on the vaccination exercise doesn’t make for riveting reading. There is a lot of resistance or fear because of the misinformation that is flying around about the COVID-19 vaccine.

So, there is a huge need to disseminate the correct information in encouraging people to take the jab. But football has an opportunity to take a leading role in ramping up the numbers. At the risk of sounding like a stuck record, I still believe if we incentivised the fans who have already taken the jab by allowing a limited number to watch the games when the league kicks-off on October 23, it would be a perfect way to do it.

I have no doubt in my mind that, if say, we had 1 000 fans allowed into the stadium, you would get more fans interested in taking the jab. People miss going to the stadiums to watch their favourite teams. The football industry has taken a nosedive ever since the COVID-19 pandemic turned our lives upside down. Already we are seeing the effects of the pandemic with many teams struggling to make ends meet. It’s going to be worse if the situation remains the same.

As Danny Jordan nicely put it, we need to restore the football economy. The PLE is the biggest single event organiser in the country. It is a huge industry with far more reaching consequences in the country’s economic, social and even political standing. They never say an idle mind is a devil’s workshop for nothing. If you know, you know. The Ministry of Sports, Culture and Youth Affairs, Harries Bulunga, seriously needs to lobby for a return of a limited number of the vaccinated fans as an incentive and this would in turn encourage others to vaccinate.

If 1 000 fans were allowed into the stadium in the opening league games, I have no doubt the next weekend we would see the numbers increase exponentially. As President James Marshall, in the iconic movie, Air Force One, played by Harrison Ford, articulates; “if you give a mouse a cookie, he’s gonna want a glass of milk,” Give the jabbed fans the incentive of watching their favourite teams, the rest would not want to be left out. Let’s jovel’industry; let’s tight mark against COVID-19.

Post your comment

Your name:

Your e-mail address:

Add your comments:

Please enter the code you see in the image:

Image:

Code: