STATS: A history of PSL hat-tricks | African News

Peter Shalulile led Sundowns to a 4-1 win on Wednesday night, collecting the Man of the Match award at the end of the night. The win took Sundowns to within 10 points of another league title, but the story is about one man. His hat-trick is grabbing the headlines, and rightly so – this was the first halt-trick seen in the league this season. It came with just over a month of the season remaining, but we’ll take it. Better late than never:

0 – Only once before has a PSL season gone from start to finish without a hat-trick; that was 2017/18.

Phew, thanks for saving the season, Peter.

The first player to score a hat-trick in the PSL was Roger Lupiya, back in December 1996 for SuperSport against QwaQwa Stars. The last player to do so was Lebo Manyama for Chiefs against Golden Arrows in June last year. Altogether, 117 hat-tricks have been scored in the top-flight, with Shalulile’s effort clocking in at Number 118. That said, he’ll consider it special as it is his first, and also his country’s first.

1 – Peter Shalulile is the first player from Namibia to score a hat-trick in the PSL, with Namibia the 16th different nation to be represented by a hat-trick scorer in the top-flight.

On the club level, Shalulile’s hat-trick was the 14th by a Sundowns player. Chiefs are the outright leaders when it comes to club hat-tricks in the top-flight, with 15. Many readers would be forgiven for not recognising the club with the 4th most hat-tricks in the PSL era. That is the once-mighty Jomo Cosmos, whose contributors to the total include the likes of Tico-Tico Bucuane, Esau Kanyenda & Christopher Katongo.

Hang on; we have an equaliser:

10 – Chiefs and Sundowns have both seen 10 different players score a hat-trick for them in the PSL, the highest number of unique hat-trick scorers of all sides.

Shalulile is also the 89th player to score a league hat-trick, joining a club of 88 other heroes led by Pollen Ndlanya & Daniel Mudau. 

A special mention to Pollen Ndlanya who not only leads the hat-trick charts, but is also the only player to have scored a hat-trick for 3 different clubs (Chiefs, Pirates & AmaZulu). Not only that:

4 – Pollen Ndlanya scored his hat-tricks in 4 different seasons – 1996/97, 1998/99, 1999/00 and 2001/2.

Very nice of him to take a break in 97/98 and 2000/01.

Much more could be written about hat-tricks, but we’ll round this up with a note on Mabhuti Khenyeza & Siyabonga Nomvethe. Khanyeza scored 2 hat-tricks in his top-flight career, with those coming just 2 months apart (57 days to be exact). It remains the shortest gap between hat-tricks by any player who scored more than 1. Siya Nomvete also scored 2 hat-tricks in his (long) career. The first came on 22 February 1998 (hello Nokia), and the last came on April 29, 2012 (hello iPhone).

14 years 2 months 5 days – That gap of more than 14 years remains a record for time between the first and last PSL trebles by a single player.

Side note: the EPL record is 14 years, one month, and 29 days held by CR7, so Nomvete beats Ronaldo by seven days. Siuuuu…

By Opta Jabu

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