Kaizer Chiefs players and officials were smiling again after ending a recent slump — which included elimination from the lucrative Telkom Knockout competition — with a 3-1 Premier Soccer League win over Black Leopards at Thohoyandou Stadium on Saturday night. Also, Supersport United beat Golden Arrows 5-1 in Pretoria.

Orlando Pirates were poised to emerge from the pit of Premier Soccer League despair in which they have sunk this season at Ellis Park on Saturday afternoon when all hell broke during a 50th-minute debacle in the 1-1 draw with Jomo Cosmos. Ultimately, the game disintegrated into a kick-and-rush affair.

Moroka Swallows, the last of Soweto’s ”Big Three”, crashed out of the Telkom Knockout at the Green Point Stadium in Cape Town on Wednesday night and continued a miserable sequence of results that has left the Dube club shorn of self-belief and in crisis. The Birds went down 2-1 to a youthful and willing but distinctly vulnerable Ajax Cape Town.

The media walked out en bloc from a briefing due to be staged on Tuesday afternoon by the board of directors of the 2010 World Cup Local Organising Committee. The walkout was agreed upon when none of the board members had arrived for the briefing a matter of 70 minutes after the stipulated ”1pm sharp” starting time at the plush Westcliff Hotel in Johannesburg.

Upstart Premier Soccer League (PSL) leaders Silver Stars were in seventh heaven at a rain-swept Bafokeng Royal Sports Palace on Sunday afternoon after bundling PSL Cup kings Kaizer Chiefs out of the lucrative Telkom Knockout competition with a resolute 2-1 victory.

The Orlando Pirates ”Ship of Misery” continued to sink into a sea of soccer oblivion at Ellis Park on Saturday night as The Buccaneers tumbled out of the Telkom Knockout competition while going down 1-0 to Santos. And elimination at the quarterfinal stage followed the same uncanny path as most of Pirates’ other setbacks this season.

If Orlando Pirates claim their 2-1 defeat to Benoni Premier United at a rain-swept Germiston Stadium on Sunday afternoon came from a succession of freakish elements, there is no doubt it was inspired by what can already be called the PSL goal of the season.

Wits University went clay-pigeon shooting in their Premier Soccer League game against Moroka Swallows at a balmy but largely deserted Germiston Stadium on Wednesday afternoon and ultimately found the Birds easy targets in a 4-0 demolition. Amazingly, the goal deluge only started in the 50th minute.