ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the nature of club integration in the National Professional Soccer League during the period 1978–1984 from the perspective of former white National Football League teams. It describes the soccer leagues as an analytical lens through which to consider the convergence between sport, race, policy, and fandom in South African soccer at the time. The chapter discusses the latter line of inquiry by serving as a historical case study for the complexities of sporting integration and explores to the growing scholarship on South African soccer more broadly—a trend that accelerated significantly around the time of the country’s hosting of the 2010 FIFA World Cup. It provides a historical marker of the complicated set of variables that enter the playing field when considering sporting integration in a racially-divided country. Despite the uneven and sometimes troubling nature of soccer integration during this period, arguably the process was significant in the context of the final phase of apartheid.
