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Thursday was a watershed moment for the National First Division (NFD).
A few moments after PSL chairperson Irvin Khoza announced that the NFD had signed a five-year title sponsorship deal and the champions will pocket R3 million, the league’s board of governors (BoG) also approved a deal that paved the way for the return of Moroka Swallows – or will it simply be Swallows FC?
All these announcements came at the back of the PSL executive committee meeting that took place in Kempton Park, Johannesburg, on Thursday.
Prior to announcing engineering firm GladAfrica as the principal backers of the NFD, Khoza bid farewell to Maccabi FC co-chairperson Alan Norman from the BoG, which is made up of 16 Premiership and 16 first division clubs – without giving a hint that, effectively starting on Thursday, they will welcome a new club owner.
However, Norman – without really naming Swallows – confirmed on the sidelines of the gathering that: “There is a company represented by an individual which has bought the franchise (Maccabi).
The effective date is today (Thursday) and it has been approved and they will now run it.”
“Part of the transaction is they’ll apply for a name change. We think we know what they are going to apply for; I think everyone knows,” he said, effectively confirming the reports that have been doing the rounds that Swallows had bought the NFD status of Maccabi.
Gauteng Education MEC Panyaza Lesufi – who has been at the forefront of efforts to revive Swallow – has been dropping hints all along and he tweeted on Thursday morning that “the journey begins tonight” when one of his followers teased him with the logo of Swallows.
Meanwhile, Norman – clearly cautious at not letting the cat out of the bag before Swallows made an official statement – lent credence to all the speculation.
“Talks weren’t long. That particular club has been trying to make a comeback for a long time and that it was just opportune that it ended coming to us.
“Now they’ve got to live up to the legacy. They got a history and community behind them. That was the motivation for the transaction.
We don’t have the community, we don’t have history – that’s why we are selling. Our name and brand is not relevant in the townships.”
On the NFD sponsorship Khoza said: “For now we guarantee 30 televised games, beyond that there might be other games televised going into the future. Five years is a long time.
With the innovative ideas coming from GladAfrica we are going to push everybody to make sure that we achieve that objective that all the games are televised.”
Khoza could not reveal the sponsorship fee but he was hopeful that the new deal will pave the way for another sponsorship for a knockout competition, exclusively for the NFD.
The last time the NFD had a sponsor was in 2007.
