Manager for Sport and Recreation at the Polokwane municipality Mantlako Sebaka has explained what halted the DStv Premiership game between Kaizer Chiefs and Royal AM at the Peter Mokaba Stadium on Sunday evening.
The match, which Chiefs won 2-0, was suspended for 15 minutes after flood lights went off on the pitch in the 25th minute.
Sebaka says it wasn’t a load shedding matter but thunder that knocked the main switch.
“Yesterday we had a break of the playing time because of the thunder,” he told iDiski Times.
“There was a huge lightning thunder which knocked off our main switch control but obviously the lights did not go off completely.
“It just knocked off the lux; meaning the lux for the ability to play to continue was affected. So it wasn’t load shedding, it was just that the lux was brought down hence the referee called the game to adjourn for a little while.”
Sunday was not the first time an official match at the 2010 Fifa World Cup venue was halted because of lighting issues.
In 2015, SuperSport United and Orlando Pirates had to finish their league game the next day due to lights failure in one of the stand,s with the game having played for 62 minutes on the original day.
Story by Lethabo Kganyago (@KganyagoLee).
