The Malta Football Association has finally decided to listen.

It had ignored calls for the postponement of the start of the BOV Premier League, made by Msida St Joseph some three weeks before the campaign kicked off on 21 August.

The Malta Independent on Sunday had also carried several stories in which doubts as to the regularity of the season had been raised. The MFA had turned its back to these stories too.

“The show must go on,” MFA president Joe Mifsud had said when the draws for the Premier League and First Division championship were held in late July. He had said these words in spite of the fact that it was known that there could have been chaos – and eventually there was – once the decisions on corruption allegations were taken.

Well, the show will not go on for now, as the MFA last Monday night decided to suspend the league at least until 17 September – that is until a decision on the second corruption case involving a Premier League club is made.

Finally, the MFA’s stubbornness and pride subsided to make way for commonsense. It should have not taken the MFA so long for it to see that its idea to keep going on as if nothing had happened was doing more harm than good to the local football game.

For those not into local football matters, here’s a brief background.

Vittoriosa Stars were relegated from the Premier League to the First Division – two days after playing their first Premier League match against Sliema – because of their involvement in a bribery case last December.

Another Premier League club, Marsaxlokk, could suffer the same fate if found guilty of corrupt practices in their game against Msida SJ, played last November. Marsaxlokk have so far played two games.

Until last weekend, the demotion of Vittoriosa meant that the number of clubs in the Premier League was down to nine teams, and could go further down to eight if Marsaxlokk are relegated. One match that involved Vittoriosa was cancelled and the club’s remaining fixtures were annulled.

But last Monday the MFA decided to suspend the league until the Marsaxlokk case is decided, and at the same time elected to keep both the Premier League and First Division championship with 10 teams. This means that one or two teams will have to be promoted from the First Division when the Marsaxlokk case is closed.

Better late than never, I say.

The Premier League should never have started while the two cases were still pending. The MFA should have waited until the completion of the investigation into the two cases before giving the green light for the league to begin.

In one of the stories carried by TMIS, the draws of the Premier League and First Division had been described as a “farce” – because there was a great possibility that the MFA would have had to change the fixtures once the inquiries into the corruption cases were concluded, and therefore the draws should not have been made with cases of corruption still pending.

If the MFA had postponed the draws of the championships and the start of the Premier League, as had been suggested, it would have saved itself the embarrassment of having to do everything all over again.

Secondly, it would have also saved itself the embarrassment of having had to cancel a match that had already been played.

When Italy faced a massive scandal three years ago – a total of 39 matches, not two – the Italian football federation waited until judgment day before it held the draws for the following season. Added to this, it solved the issue in less than three months in between seasons.

It is a shame that it took eight months for one case to be solved, while we are still waiting for the outcome of the second one.

And it is a shame that the MFA did not anticipate the confusion there would have been – or maybe it did, but chose to ignore it – once the inquiries were not concluded before the start of the season.

The MFA could have avoided this if it had just listened.

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