City Rovers yet to open cheque book

Senior Reporter—
AT a time when most serious Castle Lager Premiership clubs are already finalising their list of 30 players ahead of the 2016 season, Mutare City Rovers have not yet put pen to paper even with a single player, Post Sport has learnt. While Rovers have a large pool of players, mainly from Division One clubs, who are attending training sessions at Mutare Sports Club, the team is yet to conclude contractual agreements with the ones they intend to use in their Premiership debut season.

Mutare City Rovers spokesperson, Clayton Masekesa, confirmed that they were yet to sign a single player. “The coaches are yet to come out with their best players. We are now playing a series of friendly matches and that is where the coaches will now make a better assessment.

“You can see that there are some players who are good at training, but fail to impress during a real game situation. We hope the coaches will make their final list after friendly matches.

“At the moment players from all over Zimbabwe are still coming for trials and competition has reached a higher level. We hope the coaches will come up with the cream from what they have at their disposal,” said Masekesa.

Queried on whether Mutare City Rovers were not lagging behind in their pre-season preparations, Masekesa said: “That is what the coaches have decided. They said we should wait and exhaust the selection.

“However, there are others who have made the grade already and they will put pen to paper this weekend as we are sorting out transfer papers from their previous clubs.”

Magusha, as Mutare City Rovers are nicknamed, regrouped on January 4 ahead of the 2016 Premiership season and their pre-season preparations have not attracted much hype as the club appeared to be interested in raw talent, cheap labour and not big names.

Rovers will have to make do with most of the players they had in Division One and a few largely unknown additions from Mutoko Pirates, Tenax, Buffaloes and Dongo Sawmills.

Mutare City Rovers played against fellow municipality outfit Harare City in a pre-season friendly match at Vengere Stadium in Rusape which the Mutare side lost 2-3.

Although Magusha could have been misled into believing that they could have a competitive side, Harare City did not field any of their latest signings in that match, let alone some, if not most, of their regular players from last season.

That City Rovers went on to lose that friendly match even when playing against Harare City’s reserve side speaks volumes of the work at hand for Magusha before the top-flight league season starts.

Meanwhile, Mutare City Rovers will on Monday know whether they will go ahead to play in the Castle Lager Premiership after deliberations by the Zifa Appeals Committee on complains that were put forward by rivals, Masvingo United.

In an interview from Dubai where he is on a Zifa business trip, chief executive, Jonathan Mashingaidze, confirmed that the decision will be announced on Monday.

“The decision will be announced on Monday. In fact, it will be determined this week and the announcement will then be made public on Monday,’ said Mashingaidze.Masvingo United successfully sought a court interdict to stop the coronation of Mutare City Rovers as the 2015 Eastern Region Division One champions although their heads of arguments do not hold any water, if documents in possession by this newspaper are anything to go by.

Zifa Eastern Region was set to hand over the league winner’s trophy to Mutare City Rovers at an end of year champions’ coronation ceremony that had been scheduled for Mutare recently.

But the event could not go ahead after the regional football administration body was barred from awarding Mutare City Rovers the champion’s trophy after Masvingo United successfully sought a court interdict to stop proceedings.

Yuna Yuna, as Masvingo are adoringly referred to by their fans, argue that striker, Dylan Chivandire was not registered as a Mutare City player and Mutare City Rovers used Tafadzwa Mukahlera when the player belonged to them.Although it is not clear which channels were used given that the Eastern Region administration was in the dark, it appears Masvingo later withdrew their court case and filed a complaint with Zifa, hence the Appeals Committee’s deliberations.