Until March 6th, 2019, Ugandans hadn’t witnessed a league game played under floodlights in seven years, in fact the last was May 25th, 2012, and then BUL defeated Proline 1-0 in the last game for the 2011/2012 season.
But also that season, a handful of games were played under floodlights something the Uganda Premier League wants to adopt moving forward.
On Wednesday they tried their luck one more time as Kirinya Jinja SSS defeated SC Villa 2-1 at Namboole in the StarTimes Uganda Premier League.
“It is normal for a game to be played at night, this is the trend we want to take in the StarTimes Uganda Premier League,” CEO Bernard Bainamani told www.football-256.com.
“We want at one point to have all games scheduled in working days to be played at night when people are done with their work, only weekend games will be played during day,” he added.
Bainamani also claimed that they want this to prepare players for professional football as most of the professional leagues use floodlights.
“This will also help prepare our players for professional football, we don’t want them to see it as something new when they reach there, as we sorted out the artificial turf issue, we also want to sort out this.”
“Next season, many games will be played on floodlights especially those that will be played during working days.”
“We want KCCA FC and Vipers SC to install floodlights at their stadiums by next season because we believe they have that capacity.”
But how many more games will be played under floodlights in the remaining games of the season?
“This season we shall have one more game played under floodlights and that will be URA game at Namboole,” Bainamani added.
Although it’s not yet clear whether all necessary logistics especially security have been worked on since Namboole tends to be very insecure at night.
Wednesday Results
KCCA FC 1-1 Tooro United
Maroons 1-0 Bright Stars
Paidha Black Angels 0-2 URA
BUL 2-1 Police
SC Villa 1-2 Kirinya Jinja SSS
Tuesday Result
Express 0-0 Mbarara City
Ndejje Lions 2-1 Vipers
Nyamityobora 1-0 Onduparaka
