Given the option of the warmth, luxury and complimentary red wine of the Arabella Sheraton, or what promises to be a cold and wet night at the Formula 1 wind tunnel that is the Athlone Stadium, there wouldn’t seem to be much of a decision to make. But while I will be at the hotel, helping to raise a fair amount of money for an exceptional cause, I’ll be on the phone to the football stadium all through dinner, keeping tabs on what might still be a deciding game in the PSL.

Nick Farr-Jones is in Cape Town for the JAG Foundation’s black tie dinner and auction at Rian Gous’s backpacker’s on the foreshore, and together with an aging and increasingly rotund Christian Stewart, we’ll be drumming up funds for JAG’s assorted operations around South Africa. From helping underprivileged children, backing sports development projects, injecting capital into local communities, and giving Robbie Fleck a job as a security guard, JAG are doing outstanding work, and Thursday night offers a platform for giving that work a significant boost.

But while Nick, Christian and myself shuffle across the stage (and if Christian’s performance is anything like the Heineken World Cup launch we did at Caprice last year, then an extremely entertaining night lies ahead), Ajax Cape Town and Santos will be engaged in a Cape derby that has a great deal more significance than usual. For if SuperSport don’t win their game against Golden Arrows on Wednesday night, then Ajax, with a modest budget and precious few star names, are still in with a shout at winning the Absa Premiership.

I’ve got a very soft spot for Ajax, having worked with the team for five years (not one start, despite umpteen promises from Gordon Igesund), but this season was one where a top eight finish looked optimistic. Instead, Craig Rosslee, with hair so perfectly coiffed Craig Matthews would approve, has picked up from Muhsin Ertugral’s departure for Chiefs (great move, that), and moulded an exciting, brash team of young footballers who’ve managed to both entertain and play winning football this season.

And as a result, Ajax sit second in the log, ready to pounce on a SuperSport slip-up. That would be unlikely, certainly, but Ajax are still in with a shout, particularly in a league that has produced far more excitement than it’s had credit for this season. South Africa’s soccer media is solidly geared at following Chiefs and Pirates, and once they drop out of the race — spectacularly so, in the case of an underwhelming Amakhosi this season — there’s a visible wane in intensity of coverage of the league.

Throw in a gripping finale to the English Premiership, and the looming Champions League final — I had breakfast with George Dearnaley this morning, who’s off to Moscow on Monday, and is furiously practicing his Russian — and the all-consuming horizon that is 2010, and the PSL has had a poor cousin feel to it. And while some of the football seen has been appalling, the standard is generally getting better, and with SuperSport, Ajax, Santos and Swallows all making inroads on the Chiefs-Pirates-Sundowns hegemony, this season’s league has been a healthy advert for the local game.

I’ll be unashamedly punting for Arrows tonight, then (that’ll teach Gavin Hunt for cancelling golf with me last week), and if they do get a result, then the Cape Town derby gets very big indeed. A night out with Nick Farr-Jones and Christian Stewart promises to be memorable, and the work JAG will do with Thursday’s proceeds is much-needed; an Ajax win at Athlone on the back of an Arrows upset would make for a very good night indeed.

  • Shaun Bartlett’s future at Chiefs has suddenly become a hot topic; before he settles on a club for what will probably be his final season in football, however, he’s got an important assignment at Pinnacle Point for the Pilsner Urquell SuperSport Shoot-out. And on the basis of Monday’s round, he and the other sports stars in action will have a tough time if the breeze gets up; the course is looking immaculate, though, and there can’t be a more visually arresting course on the planet. And as soon as I recover from the helicopter flight back to Cape Town through torrid weather, I’ll be ready for another round; if only projectile vomiting was an Olympic sport…

  • Contact Dan at dan@metropolis.co.za

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