Mamelodi Sundowns played their 50th game of the season away at Stellenbosch on Sunday carrying a lot of weight on their feet from all the travels that they have made this season.
Sundowns were 2-1 winners in the Nedbank Cup semi-finals on Sunday in what was their 26th away game of the campaign.
READ: Sundowns striker wanted in Europe
From the Danie Craven Stadium, The Brazilians will take the short trip to Cape Town International Airport from where they will take a two-hour flight to King Shaka International Airport in Durban before an hour drive to Hammarsdale.
The Mpumalanga Stadium in Hammarsdale is where Golden Arrows will be waiting on Wednesday (19h30).
By the time they get back home to prepare for Royal AM, Sundowns will have done a round trip of about 3500 km calculated from the day they took the short trip to FNB Stadium on Thursday then Stellenbosch and Hammarsdale.
Sundowns will still have trips to Pietermaritzburg to play Royal AM, back to Danie Craven for another date with Stellenbosch, and then two trips to Mbombela Stadium to play TS Galaxy and then Orlando Pirates in the Nedbank Cup final.
That will mean another 5000km of travelling for Sundowns before they end the season on June 1.
Players in the Bafana squad will then be off to Nigeria for a 2026 FIFA World Cup qualifier which is strangely still billed for June 3 before another game against Zimbabwe in Bloemfontein on June 11.
Prior to the last two games that Sundowns have played, Sundowns had done in the region of 60 000km in the period from the start of the season until the end of the year.
They did trips to Polokwane, Gqeberha, Durban, Polokwane, Johannesburg South, Dar es Salaam, Soweto, Durban, Mbombela, Luanda, Cairo, Casablanca, Lubumbashi, Durban, Cairo, and Cape Town.
Trips to Luanda (Angola), Cairo (Egypt), and Casablanca (Morocco) were for the African Football League while Dar es Salaam (Tanzania), Lubumbashi (DR Congo), Cairo (Egypt) were in the CAF Champions League.
Into the New Year, they also went to Dobsonville (110 km return trip), Nouadhibou (Mauritania) – 13 700km return trip, Dar es Salaam (Tanzania) – 5000km return trip, Cape Town (2500km return trip), Dobsonville (110km return trip), and Tunis (Tunisia) – 14 500km return.
This comes up to a total of approximately 104 500km of travel that Sundowns will have done upon returning from Mbombela for the Nedbank Cup final.
Luanda has a return flight time of seven hours, Cairo is 16,5 hours return on a direct flight, Tunis is about 25 hours return while Casablanca is the most complicated and is 30 hours return on the shortest travel route.
READ | Downs to meet Pirates in Nedbank Cup final
Worth noting with air travel are the time-consuming logistics prior to boarding and upon landing especially on international flights.
Of note about Sundowns' games this season is that while the fixtures show 51 games played they had one walkover against Moroka Swallows in December.