PSL chief operating officer professor Ronnie Schloss says the league's relaunch has succeeded all expectations.

There has been no major crisis since the 2019/20 season restarted in Gauteng earlier this month.

Despite no crowds allowed, Schloss says the benefits "are far out-weighing the setbacks".

Launched amid high hopes, but with justified uneasiness in an atmosphere fraught with misgivings over the continued coronavirus pandemic, the successful relaunch of PSL fixtures after almost five months has exceeded all expectations.

This was the view expressed today by long-serving PSL doyen, professor Ronnie Schloss, who said "hardly a soul could have anticipated that the hectic programme of games in the Absa Premiership and Nedbank Cup could have been launched so smoothly - and without a major crisis of any sort - in the initial 10 days after the problem-riddled break."

"Naturally," he added, "matters are far from perfect. How could they be with no spectators at games as part of the restrictions designed to restrict the scourge of deaths and illness that has gripped the country?

"But the reintroduction of major soccer has provided the country with a much-needed diversion from the crisis and given the fans something more to take their minds off the problems surrounding them."

What is more, Schloss believes the major possible danger mooted from soccer's return - that of increasing the extent of the pandemic - has not materialised.

"There may well be some disconcerting setbacks linked to the soccer," added the long-serving PSL official. "'That is almost inevitable. But so far the benefits are far out-weighing the setbacks and hopefully this trend will continue until the 2019/20 programme is completed."

And purely from a soccer point of view, the PSL will be able to come up with legitimate League and Cup champions instead of proclaiming those tinged with an artificial stigma - or rule on none emerging at all.

The detractors meanwhile proclaimed that locally the officials and players were without the discipline and expertise to emulate the success of similar ventures in Europe and elsewhere.

A major factor in the success story has been the diligent and comprehensive TV coverage that has drawn a wide range of viewers throughout the country and maintained almost infectious interest in who will end up as champions and who will be promoted and relegated from and to the subsidiary GladAfrica Championship.

Tragedy of some dimension may still strike, but on the initial evidence the venture that stumbled indecisively in its making and looked as though it might not materialise at all, has proved worthwhile - even beyond all expectations as the learned Prof Schloss has intimated.