Gavin Hunt recalls early PSL days on R5,000 salary as league turns 30

Gavin Hunt has revealed he was earning just R5,000 a month when he first coached in the Premier Soccer League, as South Africa’s top flight prepares to mark its 30th anniversary.

The 60-year-old, the PSL’s longest-serving coach, reflected on how dramatically wages have risen since the late 1990s, describing the growth in salaries as “astronomical” compared with what he and his peers received at the start of the professional era.

Hunt was speaking to KickOff.com at the season launch of the 2026/27 Betway Premiership, with the league due to celebrate 30 years since its formation on 9 August.

From R1,500 player to R5,000 coach

Hunt’s playing career ended at Hellenic in 1994, when he was earning around R1,500 a month – a figure he says reflected the “normal going rate” for players at that time.

“When I stopped playing in ’94, I was on R1500 which was the normal going rate,” he said.

He immediately moved into coaching, taking charge of Seven Stars in the first division. His breakthrough into the PSL came four years later, when Seven Stars won promotion from the Coastal Stream and entered the top flight at the start of the 1998/99 season.

By then, Hunt was just 34 and, at that stage, the youngest coach in the league. Despite holding a top-flight job, he recalls earning only R5,000 a month.

“I was a PSL coach earning R5 000 a month then it went up to R25 000 which was unbelievable,” Hunt explained. “When I came in (into the PSL) I was on R5 000 and then it all went up to like R25 000 from there afterwards.

“So, it was a huge increase, and it then just escalated from there.”

Sponsorship boom after Afcon success

Hunt links the shift in earnings to the arrival of major sponsorships in the late 1990s and the financial momentum generated after Bafana Bafana’s 1996 Africa Cup of Nations triumph.

“The money then jumped around ’98 when sponsorship came into the league,” he said. “In the years after the ’96 Nations Cup it was unbelievable how the money escalated.

“The money is astronomical now to what we earned.”

Since first stepping into the dugout, Hunt has spent his entire coaching career within the country’s top division, taking charge of Hellenic, Black Leopards, Moroka Swallows, SuperSport United, Bidvest Wits, Kaizer Chiefs, Chippa United, SuperSport United again, Durban City and Stellenbosch.

From ‘man’s game’ to faster, technical football

Beyond finances, Hunt believes the PSL product on the pitch has also been transformed, arguing that the modern game is much more technical and quicker than the league he entered in the late 1990s.

“Football wise, it is a different type of game now,” he said. “It was lot more physical back then with bigger and stronger players but now it is much more technical and faster game. So, the game has changed.

“Completely changed from when we had big strikers and big defenders with a direct playing style.

“The pitches are much better now…I’m not saying the football is much better now than then.

“The game was a man’s game back then, but it has changed and gotten softer.”

As the PSL approaches its 30th birthday, Hunt’s journey from a R1,500-a-month player to a R5,000-a-month rookie top-flight coach – and then through the era of sponsorship-fuelled escalation – underlines how far the league has travelled on and off the pitch.