HELLENIC SELL AT END OF AN ERA
South Africa's oldest professional club Hellenic have sold their
premier league status to a club in the first division but ironically
could be back in top flight football next season in what seems
a clever piece of business.
Greek-owned club Hellenic, one of the last clubs left over from
the days of whites-only professional soccer in South Africa, have
swapped assets with Premier United, a first division team based
in the gold mining town of Welkom in the Free State province and
owned by a black family in a deal worth R5-million (about US$700
000).
Hellenic played their last game in Cape Town on Wednesday night,
drawing 2-2 with Lamontville Golden Arrows to remain firmly rooted
to the bottom of the table.
Premier United will now take over Hellenic's place in the top
flight of South African soccer while Hellenic will get United's
berth in the first division.
League rules allow for the sale of a franchise during the season
but do not allow a change of club names until the season is completed.
So, Hellenic will remain in the top flight in name only, although
their colours, personnel and home ground will all be totally differently.
The new owners are taking a major gamble as the club sit seven
points from a position of safety outside the relegation zone,
at the halfway point of the season, and are firm favourties for
the drop down to the first division.
Premier United's franchise, however, is fourth in the first division,
with every chance of promotion in May. It means Hellenic's owners
could well be back in the top flight in August, once the name
changes are effected, while their previous franchise drops down
a division.
Hellenic's sale comes after years of dwindling spectator support
and perennial battles against relegation, the club victims of
changing times in South African sport and society.
At their height in the 1960s and 1970s, the Cape Town club regularly
attracted crowds of around 40,000 and had players like George
Best, Gordon Banks and former England captain Bobby Moore guesting
for them. They were champions in 1971, the same year a rival black
professional league was first created. But when the white and
black leagues amalgamated in 1976, support for clubs like Hellenic
dwindled dramatically as white supporters stayed away from mixed
soccer.
All of the country's formerly white-only teams, who had established
professional soccer in South Africa in 1958, are now extinct,
sold off either to black businessmen in a delicious twist of irony
or just gone out of business.
The only survivor from the era of colour prejudice is Wits University,
who were in the second divison of the white league in 1975 before
the racial barriers came down.
Soccer was one of the first sports to break down apartheid barriers,
but it took another 16 years before the country was allowed back
into international football following the end of white minority
rule.