Windhoek
Windhoek Independence Stadium will not be hosting Namibia Premier League (NPL) matches and some athletic activities until April 4.
The closure was necessitated by the rehabilitation of the grass at the venue, which will host the 2016 Council of Southern Africa Football Associations (Cosafa) Cup in May. Namibia is defending the trophy won in South Africa in May last year.
Sam Nujoma Stadium will, however, be available for NPL games. Independence Stadium will only made available for national football team preparations and some athletic competitions.
Director of Sports in the Ministry of Sport, Youth and National Service Sivute Katamba said during the period of the stadium’s closure, activities such as javelin and shot-put competitions will be seriously “controlled”.
“As such, no training for field events will be allowed during this window,” he said in a letter addressed to the Namibia Football Association, Namibia Sports Commission, NPL, Athletics Namibia, Namibia School Sports Unionand individual users on November 26, 2015.
The stadium will only be available for Cosafa Cup activities from April 4 to June 6.
Approached for comment on how the closure affects the NPL schedule, NPL administrator Tovey Hoebeb said the arrangement has forced the league to reduce its Windhoek-based games from 16 to 8 per week.
“We are now forced to have most of our games during the day, plus divide them into two different groups,” he explained.
Night games scheduled for Wednesdays and Fridays have thus been moved to weekends, and will be played between 13h00 to 18h00 at the Sam Nujoma and University of Namibia stadiums.
Hoebeb was adamant that the shift would not affect the scheduled end of the 2015/2106 season before Cosafa starts.
Abraham So-Oabeb from the Ministry of Sport, Youth and National Service, who currently oversees Independence Stadium’s maintenance, said the stadium should be in a good condition when it hosts one of the biggest football tournaments in Southern Africa.
“The grass needs to be rehabilitated and if we play too many games on the pitch we will not have green grass when Cosafa kicks off.
Also, remember our winter will start in April, which is not good for the grass, but as a ministry we will do all we can to keep the pitch in a good state,” he said.
So-Oabeb explained that it would be cheaper to maintain the stadium until the Cosafa Cup rather than allow football games to continue on a weekly basis.
He added that the stadium’s grass started turning yellow and dying at some spots in 2015, because the ministry’s contract with the landscaping and gardening service company to maintain the grass had expired.
The ministry will acquire a service provider in due course to maintain the pitch, he said. -Nampa