EFA MEDICAL COMMITTEE TOO COMFORT-ABLE!

My dearest readers... The sight of Italy’s Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte shedding a bucketful of tears while conducting a press conference live on television in early April really touched the cockles of my heart.

Italy, the home of the Catholic Church, and for a while, the epicentre of the coronavirus at the beginning, was a perfect example of what it took to turn a blind eye on poor leadership.
The Italians spent capacious amount of time fighting off a prime minister who had become the centre of everything good about leadership and governance. In the process, public services took a back-seat as the COVID-19 pandemic exploded in the country. Closer to home, after an absence of eight months, football returned in the country’s football pitches on December 12 under the ‘new normal’ following government’s greenlight based on what we all considered to be a fool-proof plan by the football authorities of how they will navigate the ‘new normal’ terrain.

Positive

No sooner, the first ball was kicked in anger than some players tested positive for the coronavirus during the Mhlume Peacemakers and Moneni Pirates clash, which was eventually called off. Then of course we had another game called off between Royal Leopard and Green Mamba because of the rising number of cases in particular at the ‘Correctional Services’ camp.
Before the Premier League of Eswatini (PLE) announced the two week break, it was becoming blindingly obvious that we will have an indifferent, if not the most difficult, season to manage in the wake of the greatest tragedy in our lifetime – the COVID-19 pandemic.

Hurdle

I feel for the Mark Carmichael-led Executive Committee, who in their first year in office are facing the hurdle of having to manage not just an organisation which is financially-limping, but managing a season without any form of income with no fans being allowed inside the stadium and then of course balancing the act in the midst of the odourless, tasteless, invisible enemy – the COVID-19 pandemic. With the second wave already showing us flames as the number of deaths keep on rising – at the time of compiling this article we had 165 deaths – and 8 484 cases, this should be a warning to the football authorities that it is perhaps the opportune time to re-evaluate whether it is still worth it to continue staging football games.

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