Fans can spice up World Cup action with African safari

Nelspruit: Fans at next year's World Cup will have the chance to witness not only the fierce struggle for soccer's biggest prize but an even more intense tooth-and-claw contest for survival.

Revered Liverpool manager Bill Shankly famously said football was more important than a matter of life and death and fans visiting the Kruger National Park during the World Cup in South Africa are likely to see just that.

The park is one of the country's greatest tourist attractions and authorities want to ensure as many football fans as possible get to see it, part of efforts to hook visitors on the country for future visits.

Kruger, Africa's third largest game park, is close to Nelspruit, one of the World Cup's 10 venues and not far from another, Polokwane.

Fifa's travel agent arm, MATCH Event Services, is using Kruger as one of its seven tourist hubs or MATCH villes, where fans can enjoy a package of accommodation, tickets to follow their team and transport by air and bus to the stadiums.

MATCH officials say fans staying in Kruger can travel as far as Cape Town on the other side of the country to see matches, returning the same day to their bush camps.

Other hubs include Cape Town itself, the coastal Garden Route, and most controversially, Mauritius — a four-hour flight from South Africa.

Big five

Ray Whelan, project manager for MATCH, said 15,800 rooms had been allocated for the five-day MATCH packages in the seven locations. The huge park is home to the Big Five animals — lion, elephant, rhino, leopard and buffalo, as well as 142 other species of mammals and 507 of birds.