DeMbare’s comic error

physiotherapist.
Dynamos, the last Zimbabwean team standing on the African safari slumped to a humiliating 6-0 defeat by holders Esperance of Tunisia at the Rades Stadium in Tunis on Saturday to virtually end their 2012 Champions League interests.

Although there is still a second leg to be played in this Champions League second round tie, Callisto Pasuwa’s men are virtually out of the reckoning for a place in the Champions League group stage and will now be relegated to the second tier Confederation Cup.
If the team hogged the limelight with their huge defeat, which left the multitude of their fans shell shocked, their management was brewing another monumental gaffe on their North African tour after it emerged that the man they brought in an as a replacement for experienced long serving medic, Killian Kadye, is actually an ambulance driver.

It has emerged that Knowledge Zambo is an ambulance driver who is employed by One Life Paramedics.
Zambo was brought in under a cloud following the controversial suspension of the long-serving and dreadlocked Kadye.
Kadye was suspended just before Dynamos flew out to Mozambique for their Champions League first round, first leg assignment against Liga Muculmana, reportedly due to a fallout between the medic and club chairman Kenny Mubaiwa.

Dynamos had earlier been dragged to court for defaulting on payments by Horizon Community-based rehabilitation services and sports rehabilitation clinic who apparently are Kadye’s employers and there were claims that the DeMbare leadership suspected that their team medic was behind the lawsuit.
But whatever problems there might be between Dynamos and Kadye, it is the move to hire an ambulance driver to practice as the team physiotherapist that has exposed the administrative challenges at the Harare giants and left players badly exposed to risks of wrong assessment on their injuries.

An image of Zambo that appeared in The Saturday Herald’s sports pages captured him applying an ice pack on Takesure Chinyama’s knee on the eve of their game against Esperance in Tunis .

The image not only seemed to tell the story of the race that the Dynamos chief striker was facing against time to be ready for the game but also torched a storm within the medical fraternity and sparked outrage on the fact that he had been presented as the Harare giants’ physiotherapist and travelled to Tunisia in that capacity.

Zambo is however NOT a qualified physiotherapist and his presence on the Dynamos technical bench has raised a lot of questions with some observers wondering whether the players are receiving the right assessment and subsequent treatment for their injuries.
Ironically Dynamos were rocked by a host of injuries to key players before they plunged into battle against Esperance with such players like goalkeeper Washington Arubi, midfielder Devon Chafa, Roderick Mutuma and Chinyama struggling to fully train.

Questions have also inevitably been raised on whether Pasuwa, on whom pressure will be piled because of last Saturday’s result, has in fact been receiving the right support and advice on players’ fitness, injuries and availability when the club’s leadership appoint an unqualified man for such a key post like physiotherapist.
Dynamos vice-chairman Webster Chikengezha, however professed ignorance about Zambo’s qualifications but indicated that he would check with both secretary-general Ray Kazembe and his chairman Mubaiwa on the their medic’s status.

“This is the first time that I am hearing about this, it has never come up in any of our meetings or may it have been discussed in those meetings which I may not have attended.
“But if those in the medical fraternity have confirmed that he is not a physiotherapist then we cannot deny it. I will check with my chairman and the secretary and we may have to ask the secretary to write to him asking about his qualifications,’’ Chikengezha said.

This is not the first time that Dynamos have employed someone without qualifications among their medical personnel having taken on board a tout in 2004 who traded as a team medic.
The Zifa Football Medicine committee is also not amused at the Dynamos’ actions and that of many of the Premiership sides who they accuse of taking a lackadaisical approach to the game.

ZFM committee secretary-general Nick Munyonga revealed that they had written to both the Zifa chief executive Jonathan Mashingaidze and his PSL counterpart Kenny Ndebele registering their concerns over the way critical football medicine issues were being handled by the top-flight sides.
Munyonga also urged clubs to approach his committee for assistance instead of employing the “wrong people’’ in key positions, ostensibly as a cost-cutting measure.
“When a player is injured what is most important is the assessment and that assessment is systematic and can only be done by a trained doctor or physiotherapist.

“When you start treating someone on the field of play either to go back and play or taken out, it can only be done by qualified and trained people so that you do not aggravate an injury.
“We have the challenge of less fit players returning to play too soon and one of the major risks is having an injury that has been poorly assessed recurring.
“A properly assessed player may miss the next two games and play the rest of the season while a poorly assessed player may play the next two games and miss the rest of the season because he would have aggravated the injury simply because he would not have rested enough,’’ Munyonga said.

Munyonga also shed some light on players’ fitness tests ahead of matches.
“The understanding of a late fitness test is that there is no way you can say that a player who has not trained because of an injury can go for a late fitness test…. fitness is only assessed at training.
“The only player who can be subjected to a late fitness test is one who has been training and gets injured at the last training session before a game, so a player who

has not trained for two to three days because of an injury is to me not fit to play.

“If you lose most of your training within 10 days of inactivity and even if the player has healed low endurance is a risk factor and such a player is likely to sufferer re-injury thus a late fitness test is not an assessment of an injury but that of fitness of someone who has already been training,’’ Munyonga said.
The Warriors team doctor’s assertion also helps put into perspective some of the challenges that Pasuwa may have faced in coming up with a fit team that would battle against a team of Esperance’s calibre.

As DeMbare troop back home and probably conduct a soul searching exercise, the club’s management would also have to look at their comic error in trusting an ambulance driver with such a key backroom role as assessing players’ injuries.
Munyonga however, insisted that Dynamos were not the only culprits in trying to circumvent the proper procedures. The Zimbabwe Olympic Committee medical commissioner also warned the local clubs to be wary of the off-field injuries and even deaths which players are at risk of and cited a number of incidents that have happened both in the country and in other leagues including the recent death in Italy of Livorno’s Piermario Morosini and the case of Bolton Wanderers’ Fabrice

Muamba.

Munyonga said his committee had continued to press for the clubs to conduct proper medical check-ups on their players before the start of the season and noted with concern that none of the teams had met their requirements, which are also in line with Fifa and Caf expectations.
“We are still pushing because as far as I know no team has submitted a Caf pre-competition medical examination report to us and those that we have seen were not signed by the competent people. As the football medicine committee we have written to Zifa and the PSL and underlined that there is a template from Caf which ought to be followed.

“We still note with concern clubs who have medical personnel who are neither doctors nor physiotherapists but we insist that teams should have at least a physiotherapist on the bench if they can’t afford to have both.
“Sometimes teams think it is a cost-cutting measure to avoid having these professionals but these are not very expensive people to hire, clubs can actually approach our committee and we can assist them,’’ Munyonga said.

Munyonga, also a member of the World anti-doping agency also warned local clubs against taking for granted the welfare of players.
“If you see what is happening in football this year there are many examples some of them as recent as Gerald Pique in the Champions League game between Barcelona and Chelsea, in last Friday night’s game between Orlando Pirates and Ajax Cape Town and of cause the Fabrice Muamba case,’’ Munyonga said.
Munyonga said although his committee was not a regulatory body, they would not stop their battle to ensure clubs comply with the required medical standards.
“We are not a regulatory body thus we can only push this through the CEOs of Zifa and PSL but we have to be careful as a nation. We have had drastic situations with the cases like that of Edwin Mekani who collapsed and died in Kadoma and a player who scored a goal then collapsed and died while celebrating that goal in Beitbridge’’.

In 2003 another player — Tawanda “Globe’’ Saravhezho also collapsed and died during a Division One match between Blue Swallows and Chegutu Pirates at Manyame.