In the strict definition of past meetings, Saturday’s derby between Cape Town City and Cape Town Spurs will be the first, although for two ‘strangers’ there is plenty of water under the bridge.
The struggling outfits meet at the Cape Town Stadium (live on SuperSport, 3pm) in a match that is no longer only about bragging rights but has taken on added significance because of the precarious position they both find themselves in, after poor starts to the new DStv Premiership season.
Spurs have lost all six of their games since earning their top flight spot via the Premier Soccer League’s end-of-season promotion-relegation playoffs to equal the record for the worst start to a season by a club in the PSL era.
City started the campaign in promising fashion, winning their opening two games but then lost five in a row before drawing at TS Galaxy last week in their last outing.
It means both clubs are despite for success for a fixture neither can ill afford to lose.
The last time the pair met, Spurs were still Ajax Cape Town, about to be relegated at the end of the 2017-18 season and spend the next five campaigns in the National First Division before making their way back up again.
But not before changing their identity, after the collaboration with Ajax Amsterdam in the Netherlands came to an end.
The Efstathiou family, who had taken over Ajax, reverted back to the Cape Town Spurs, having all these years retained the name for their holding company.
The birth of City, back in 2016, was a result of a money-fueled feud between Ari Efstathiou and his brother-in-law John Comitis, who was an equal share holder with him in the Ajax project.
A nasty series of court cases exposed the bitter rift between the two directors over the monies that Comitis received from the Premier Soccer League as a member of his executive committee for his part in the helping secure the television deal with SuperSport.
PAST CAPE DERBIES
Efstathiou felt this windfall should have been shared but Comitis felt he deserved to keep it.
The resultant fracture was such that Comitis left Ajax and went onto buy the franchise of Mpumalanga Black Aces, resurrecting the name of Cape Town City which had gone out of business in 1979.
City beat Ajax home and away in their first season in the 2016-17 campaign and then again, the next season, keeping a clean sheet in all four games.
There are fewer player ties between the clubs that expected because of Spurs’ long absence from the top flight.
Cape Town City’s veteran midfielder Thato Mokeke spent his three-and-a-half season at Ajax before going to SuperSport United, returning to Cape Town in 2016 for the first time.
Spurs have signed 26-year-old midfielder Shaquille Abraham this season but are yet to field him. He had three seasons at City but only a handful of appearances and failed to make the grade.
Derbies in the Cape have been plentiful in the past. In the Apartheid era of separate leagues, Cape Town City and Hellenic had a rich rivalry in the National Football League while a bevy of clubs like Spurs, Battswood and Glenville fought it out for honours in the Federation Professional League.
Later after unity in 1991, Santos joined Hellenic in the top flight and Spurs won promotion back the next season and went onto win the league in 1995, the last champions from the Cape.
In the 1998-99 season there were four Cape Town sides with Hellenic, Santos, Spurs and new boys Seven Stars in the PSL.
Spurs and Stars amalgamated the next year to create Ajax Cape Town. In 2010/11 Vasco da Gama joined Ajax and Santos in the top flight and this season again sees three Cape sides with Stellenbosch also in the mix.