Pretoria - The South African Football Association (Safa) is disappointed with the SABC's failure to broadcast the African Cup of Nations match between Bafana and Sierra Leone on Sunday.
The match, which was drawn nil-nil, was scheduled to be broadcast at 18:30pm, but was cancelled after the broadcaster's live transmission and its crew were grounded in Ivory Coast due to bad weather.
Safa President, Kirsten Nematandani, who congratulated Bafana for their hard fought draw, said: "We are happy with the results that our team has achieved, but at the same time disappointed that the football loving South Africans were unable to watch the gallant efforts of our boys on television."
He said it was a regrettable inconvenience and Safa will stop at nothing to ensure that they don't experience a similar fate in future. "South Africans always look forward to see Bafana Bafana in action. [They] get even desperate when the team plays away from home.
"We can't afford to disappoint millions of passionate Bafana supporters... we need to meet the SABC and find a solution because we have a series of away fixtures on our calendar;" Nematandani said.
SABC spokesperson, Kaizer Kganyago, said it would be wrong to blame the SABC for failing to show the 2012 AFCON qualifier match since they had the rights to broadcast the match in the eleventh hour.
"Negotiations with the Sierra Leone Football Association took us two months, and people should understand that rights to broadcast the match are not held by Safa, but by Sierra Leone.
"They referred us to a third party in Belgium, who ultimately gave us the rights on Friday afternoon. Our crew left on Saturday morning, but they were grounded in Ivory Coast due to bad weather," he said.
Despite the disappointment, Bafana Bafana remains top of the group with four points after a goalless draw with Sierra Leone in Freetown.
