Online Reporter
Robson Sharuko
Metros Editor
SOMEHOW the football gods have ensured that the two clubs, which featured in the Game Of The Year last season – Dynamos and Scottland – should clash in the curtain-raiser for this season.
The league champions and Cup winners will battle in the season-opening Castle Challenge Cup at Rufaro on May 1. It’s the first time in a dozen years that the winners of the League and Cup have come from the capital.
Since the reintroduction of the Chibuku Super Cup in 2014, the clubs from the capital had not won the League and Cup in the same year.
Their latest confrontation will come SIX months after the two clubs clashed at Rufaro in a five-goal thriller, which the Glamour Boys won before a raucous crowd.
The capacity crowd was treated to the Game Of The Season, which was fittingly decided by a moment of magic from the one player on the field who could provoke such a tsunami of headlines.
Denver Mukamba, who was part of the group of players who fired Scottland into the Premiership before returning to his old pastures at the Glamour Boys, was the match winner.
The golden moment came in the 80th minute, with the game tied at 2-2, when Mukamba caught the ball with a first-time shot with his left foot.
The connection was sweet and the goalkeeper Kelvin Shangiwa had no chance, beaten by both the pace and placement before he could react.
And, as the ball settled into the far corner, Rufaro erupted into the kind of beautiful blue chaos which had been missing all season.
Oh, by the way, Tymon Machope had broken the deadlock in the 37th minute, rising to meet a free-kick from Knowledge Musona and powering his header past Prince Tafiremutsa.
Three minutes after the break, the scores were level when Shadreck Nyahwa drilled the ball home.
In the 58th minute, Vusa Ngwenya’s strike turned the contest upside down,
Then Machope struck again in the 72nd minute to level the scores again.
The final chapter, of course, belonged to Mukamba.
It’s unlikely DeMbare would have survived if they had failed to win this match.
Scottland went on to win the league title, with two games to spare, which meant that the blow they suffered that afternoon was not a mortal one.
But, it’s important to put into context what DeMbare achieved on that afternoon.
They ended a seven-game winning streak by the Scotts.
It was the only loss which the Mabvuku side suffered in their last 16 league matches.
They won 13 of those games, which underlines the special shift which DeMbare put in that afternoon, not just to ensure Scottland would not win, but actually find a way to beat them in that thriller.
Five months after they produced a classic, the two Harare sides will lock horn again and, while a lot has changed, the more things change, the more they stay the same.
There will be a league championship winner leading the Scotts coaching staff, Norman Mapeza, who has returned to the capital after years of working, and winning, elsewhere.
There will also be a familiar face, to the Scotts, on the DeMbare bench.
Genesis Mangombe was the coach who helped the Scotts win the ticket into the Premiership, before he moved elsewhere, and then ended where he had started – at DeMbare.
Maybe, the only missing link will be Denver – Baba Dodo.
When they gave him his other nickname, Mundikumbuke, it was a call for us to always remember him.
Of course we do – that winner at Rufaro is the kind of stuff that footballers are remembered for.
derick.khumalo