Royal AM fail to honour their second match in a row

The Premier Soccer League’s promotion-relegation play-offs have been thrown into further turmoil.

Royal AM failed to honour their second fixture in a row within a space of two days.

On Thursday, the club did not bother to pitch at their home ground for their match against neighbours Richards Bay United and the match was abandoned.

The owner of Royal AM, Shawn Mkhize, insists that her club will not participate in the play-offs because it goes against the recent ruling made by the Johannesburg High Court.

Mpisane says the staging of the play-offs is in contempt of a ruling made by Judge Justice Nyathi who ruled that the play-offs must be suspended.

However, the PSL appealed that ruling and Judge Roland Sutherland ruled that the play-offs could go ahead.

On Tuesday, the KwaZulu-Natal-based side went to the match venue but refused to take to the field against Chippa United, and the match was abandoned.

NSL rule 15-point-2 states that where a match could not be played because of the late or non-arrival of a member team, the offending member will be charged with misconduct. And as things stand, both Chippa United and Richards Bay FC are likely to be awarded three points and three goals for Royal AM’s no-show.

“Our member in this case is the national soccer league and we will have discussions with them as far as their members are concerned. The league will decide what action will they take in line with the handbook of the national soccer league, but of course we as the association we are worried about the usage of the ordinary courts of law and we wish that this can be avoided in future and of course we will assist the league in strengthening the hand book and ensure that we don’t see similar occurrences because there are just a number of factors which we need to attend to but pro-activeness in prosecution is one of the weaknesses which we have picked up the league needs to up their ante there and ensure that cases are dealt with on time,” says SAFA CEO, advocate Tebogo Motlanthe.

With most player contracts expiring at the end of this month, the league had put aside a period of two weeks for the completion of the mini league play-off’s. The play-offs were scheduled to be played between the 15th and the 30th of June.

According to the original fixture schedule, two matches are still to be played between now and the end of the month.

Royal AM are supposed to visit Richards Bay FC in the next match, and the final match Chippa are to host Royal AM at the Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium on June 30.