Safa's Danny Jordaan doesn't expect president Cyril Ramaphosa to lift sports shutdown

23 April 2020 - 14:33 By Mninawa Ntloko
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SAFA President, Dr Danny Jordaan at SAFA House on June 28, 2017 in Johannesburg, South Africa.
SAFA President, Dr Danny Jordaan at SAFA House on June 28, 2017 in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Image: Lee Warren/Gallo Images

South African Football Association (Safa) president Danny Jordaan does not expect president Cyril Ramaphosa to lift the shutdown of sport when he addresses the nation on Thursday night.

SA has been in lockdown since March and after government announced this week that Ramaphosa would address the nation on Thursday‚ there has been speculation that the restrictions could be eased in the coming weeks.

No sport has been played in SA since March in response to the coronavirus outbreak and while some countries are exploring the possibility of returning to the playing fields‚ Jordaan told TimesLIVE that he expects the shutdown to continue in this part of the world.

“We will listen to the president tonight (on Thursday) but I do not expect him to say we can play football‚” he said on Thursday.

“You see‚ football brings together up to 90 000 people and if you can have a football match‚ then that means you can also have a church service.

“It means you can have a political rally‚ you can also have a big church mass service because the highest number of people who gather at any particular place will always be football.

“Even rugby or cricket will have 30 000 or 40 000 people excited about those sports‚ but football is the one code (you go to) if you want to test whether things are back to normal.

“Then you can have your factory of 1000 workers together because now you can 90 000 spectators together. It means we are back to normal.

“In a sense football will be the indicator if we are back to normal as a country.”

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