SOUTH Africa Football Association (Safa) has set early August as the date to resume Absa Premiership and GladAfrica Championship which were stopped in March due to the outbreak of coronavirus.
On 10 July 2020, Safa met their PSL to deliberate and finalise the date on resumption of play.
The meeting continued on Monday. On Tuesday afternoon, Safa released statement which had a processes outlined in “the return to play” protocol which was submitted and agreed by the government.
The association said the league can only return to action in August to allow match officials to work on their fitness as they have not been in action for a long time.
"In a report submitted by the League on 13 July 2020, the league confirmed that they have done extensive work to ensure that clubs return to training in compliance with the directives issued by government and in terms of the decisions of the SAFA JLC." said the statement.
"According to the Referees Sub-Committee of the Technical Committee, the first week of August 2020 is the appropriate date for the commencement of NSL matches.
"The 110 match officials will be subjected to medical and mandatory fitness test.
"The medical examination specifically entails testing for covid-19 and those who test negative would be required to undergo a mandatory 14-day fitness test under the guidance of the FIFA approved fitness trainer.
"A Fifa fitness consultant participated in the discussion.
"The fitness trainer initially wanted a three-week fitness period but both parties mutually agreed on an accelerated period of training of two weeks in order to meet the beginning of August commencement date."
As SunSport reported over the weekend, Gauteng province will host the camp.
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"The choice of Gauteng Province as the host of training and match venues, as well as hotels, was agreed to by the government and NSL and that SAFA had no input to this process.
"In the meantime, once the Compliance Officers have completed their report, it will be submitted to the government to gazette on the return to play date.
"The world football government body, FIFA has accepted that it is the government responsibility to approve the return to play date and we will update FIFA on the progress achieved."