The rows and rows of empty seats at Soccer City on Saturday tell a sad tale; the Soweto derby is steadily being downgraded to junk status

I mean, until a few years ago it was unheard of for the two 'Giants' of SA football to fail to fill up a stadium whenever and wherever they met, let alone in a needle, do or die, cup game. In fact, one of the recommendations from the Commission of Inquiry following the Elllis Park disaster was that FNB was propbably the only venue capable of hosting the derby and since then only Moses Mabhida has had the honour of substituting the football Mecca - through stringent crowd control measures designed to keep enthusiastic fans out (as opposed to keeping them awake and stop yawning)

I choose to lay the blame squarely on the feet of the eloquent yet tactically clueless man at the helm of the former glamour boys. I mean, as if having goalkeepers being his best players in successive derbies is not enough, none of his strikers have shown enthusiasm expected in an encounter such as the Soweto Derby. Not that his counterpart , Tinkler, is clued up any better but he seems able to get his players to wake up from slumberland particularly for this fixture.

Granted, Steve K was an international defender of note, but his dour, ultra-defensive approach in recent derbies doesn't augur well for the future of the derby

C'mon, Steve, drop the lecturer's twang and get the likes of Lebese and Twala to twalaza, bru!