The National Soccer League, which is the forerunner of today’s Premier Soccer League, will celebrate a 40th anniversary on Saturday, marking a time of tumultuous upheaval in South African football in the country but also a turning point in the professionalisation of the game.
Although the PSL is the marketing name of the South African professional league, it is legally still the NSL, set up in March 1985 after a breakaway led by some of the biggest names in the history of the game.
The forerunner of the PSL was founded in 1971 as the National Professional Soccer League, or more popularly the ‘Airborne League’ because of the excitement around the possibility of teams flying around the country.
There had been several abortive attempts previously to introduce a black professional league but when the day finally did come, after South African Breweries came on board as a sponsor, there was much anticipation and excitement.
In 1977 NPSL expanded as it took in clubs from the previously whites-only National Football League, which had been going since 1959, but was losing its lustre as the sporting sanctions kept away the British stars who travelled regularly to guest in its ranks.
By 1984 the NPSL had grown substantially into something of a sporting force but clubs were dissatisfied with what they perceived as a dictatorial rule of the all-powerful administrator George Thabe and the 18 clubs of the top flight defected en masse, led by the likes of Kaizer Motaung of Kaizer Chiefs and Raymond Hack of Wits University and pushed by the dynamism of public relations officer Abdul Bhamjee.
The brand new league was called the National Soccer League and immediately took over as the forum of professional soccer with its first season in 1985, drawing massive crowds and breaking apartheid barriers.
The NSL the rebranded itself as the PSL in 1996 when timing of the season was changed from February-November to August-May, in line with the major leagues in Europe in the hope that top clubs would spend their off seasons in South Africa.
DERBY MATCHES ACROSS THE COUNTRY
To launch the new breakaway NSL, derby matches were organised across the country with Cape Town starting on 22 March, 1985, followed by Chiefs and Pirates the next day and a Durban double header on the Sunday. The Cape Town clash was watched by 18 000 at Hartleyvale between Hellenic and Cape Town Spurs and settled by a 14th-minute goal from the only Swiss to have ever competed in the league, Marco Filomeno.
He was a teenager who had come out just three months earlier to visit his uncle. “My uncle wasn’t very sporty but he asked me what sport I did. I had already played at the age of 16 in the Swiss second division but when my club got a new manager from Germany he said he wanted older and more experienced players. I decided to go and visit my uncle and he knew the chairman of Hellenic (George Hadjidakis), who said I should come down to training.”
The Hellenic coach at the time was Ian Towers and he needed a right back. Filomeno went straight into the squad for the first game, playing alongside the likes of Gavin Hunt, and then went into the history books.
“I was never really good with my head but I scored from a corner.” Filomeno went home after six months and went on to play and coach in the Swiss league.