Clubs challenge relegation

have fired the first shots by filing a petition with Zifa demanding that their relegation be set aside.
The clubs want all the 16 teams in the Premiership this year to retain the same status, at the beginning of next year, with the four teams coming from Division One taking the number of clubs in the top-flight league to 20.

The petition was discussed by the Zifa board at their meeting in Harare on Friday night and was set to be further debated by the full Zifa Council, which met in the capital, the following day.
Four representatives of Shooting Stars, Kiglon, Saints and Masvingo signed a petition last week, which was handed to Zifa president Cuthbert Dube, challenging their relegation from the Castle Lager Premiership.

Wild Boys’ president, Joel Sengeredo, signed on behalf of Shooting Stars, Kiglon chief executive, Thomson Dondo, signed for his club while Masvingo secretary, Tinashe Gomba, and Saints’ representative, Joseph Nkani, signed for their clubs.
At the heart of their challenge against relegation is their contention that the 2011 Castle Lager Premiership campaign was poisoned so much by a refereeing fraternity, which titled the playing field, and influenced the fate of a number of teams.

The relegated teams argue that the fact that the Zifa board suspended the leadership of its refereeing arm, against a background of investigations launched into their role in underhand dealings related to the appointment and questionable officiating of match officials, buttress their claim that the spirit of Fair Play was compromised.
Zifa vice-president, Ndumiso Gumede, took over as the acting chairman of the association’s refereeing arm after the suspension of the Zifa Referees Committee leadership.

That Zifa resorted to hiring foreign referees from Zambia and South Africa, to take charge of the Mbada Diamonds Cup semi-finals and finals, argue the clubs in their petition, confirmed the association’s position that local referees could no longer be trusted to provide an environment of Fair Play.

“We the undersigned, strongly oppose that any team in the just-ended PSL League be relegated to Division One,” the four clubs’ representatives said in their petition.
“The playing field was not fair. The whole referees’ selection committee and their monitoring system needs urgent overhaul.
“The system is too susceptible to influence, too corrupt, too fundamentally lacking in transparency.”

The four clubs claim that they were victims, who suffered not because they were the worst football teams, but because the playing field had been poisoned.
“The just-ended 2011 season was the most difficult one to us as the PSL relegated clubs,” they said in their petition.

“We are happy, though, to say that all clubs managed to fulfil all their fixtures despite the extremely difficult conditions that we were playing under.
“The season was the most criminal of all. There was a lot of match-fixing and, in the process, serious violations of the rules of the game.

“Most of our matches were played to completely, or partially, pre-determined results and all the influence was coming from the referees and the corrupt match officials.
“The integrity of the game today remains an on-going concern to all in football.”

The four clubs said Zifa’s decision to hire foreign referees for the Mbada Diamonds semi-finals and final was confirmation, from the highest football office in the country, that all was not well.
“The Zifa chairman’s directive that the Mbada semi-final games and the final be handled by foreign referees was a clear vote of no confidence to our local referees,” said the clubs in their petition.

“Everyone involved in football today, including the fans, said thumbs up to the noble idea.
“To us, the idea made sense and those who watched the semi-final games will agree with us that there was Fair Play.

If we had these foreign referees coming to take charge of local games every week, we definitely would be having a different scenario today.
“Yes, the loser is always at fault but we must point out that if the Zifa board does not have confidence with the local referees, then how do they trust the same referees to handle the league games? It follows to say that our small little teams, without deep pockets, were obviously badly affected. We lost dismally.”