George cries for Mighty Bulls

Petro Kausiyo Deputy Sports Editor
VETERAN coach David George has bemoaned Motor Action’s demotion from the Premiership and believes the top-flight game will be deprived of the colour, which the Mighty Bulls had brought for over a decade.
Motor Action were relegated with four games to spare with the Harare side completing easily the worst year since they were formed from the ashes of Blackpool in 1999.

Three years after being crowned Premiership champions, the wheels simply came off the Motor Action wagon and for much of this season they never rose from the bottom end of the log table, culminating in their demotion.

Former Warriors assistant coach Joey Antipas, now at Chicken Inn, dumped the Mighty Bulls ship citing a difficult working environment in which lack of funds also left the players de-motivated.

But by the time Antipas left and George took over the reins together with former club centreback and captain Prince Matore, the damage had already been done and Motor Action were facing a tough battle for survival.

Although club director Eric Rosen dispelled the rumour that the Mighty Bulls would be put on sale, what was not disputable was that Motor Action were having an indifferent season that also saw an uncharacteristic clear-out of players in mid-season who were replaced by a bunch of teenage rookies hired on loan mostly from Aces Youth Academy.

In 25 matches, Motor Action have managed just three wins and nine draws which yielded just 18 points and their loss 2-0 to  Black Rhinos at home last Saturday sealed their miserable fate.

Yesterday, George reflected on the club’s journey into the unfashionable world of Division One football and lamented the huge player turnover, which he felt had also largely contributed to Motor Action’s romance with the Premiership. The 61 year-old coach, who made his name as a Dynamos forward and coach, revealed that there was huge disappointment in the Mighty Bulls camp following their relegation and reckoned that the disappointment would also reverberate across the entire Premiership “because of the unique touch that Motor Action brought to our football’’.

During some of the best moments of his coaching career, George was a trusted lieutenant to both Sunday “Mhofu’’ Chidzambwa when Dynamos reached the 1998 Champions League final and in 2008 when he was David Mandigora’s assistant as they guided DeMbare into the semi-finals of the same continental  club knock-out tournament.

But it was a different tale for George and for the Mighty Bulls last Saturday as Motor Action and Beitbridge outfit Tripple B became the first of four teams to be relegated from the Premiership this season.

It is also the first time in his long coaching career that Georg,  who said he had been accustomed to “winning  championship and cup titles’’, suffered the ignominy of presiding over a side that was demoted from the Premiership.

“We are all disappointed at Motor Action with having to be relegated, it is not something easy to accept but that is the reality of the situation.

“It must be remembered that we won the league title in 2010 so to now find yourselves in Division One is not easy. Personally, I am not used to this, it is the first time I am experiencing this in all my coaching career and what hurts most is that Motor Action are a very good side that should not have been relegated,’’ George said.

George said the huge turnover of players at the Mighty Bulls had over the years been eroding the club’s power base culminating in their worst season this year.

“Since I joined the club in 2009-2010, we have been losing very good players every year and just about every team in the PSL has players who passed through Motor Action. Half the players in the Warriors have also passed through Motor Action.

“You can see that if there had been a policy to retain all those players for at least two seasons or if we could release them in batches then we could have been champions again.

“At one stage we were so strong that for two successive years, Highlanders could not beat us and in those years we had players like Masimba Mambare, Isaac Masame, Allan Gahadzikwa, Norman Njelele, Sam Mutenheri, and Themba Ndlovu.

“We also used to have players like Charles Sibanda, Bhekithemba Ncube, Misheck Mburayi, Blessing Chimwamuchere and Milton Ncube, so you can see that if we had lost just one or two players from such a group the core of the team would have remained intact.

“Our case was also not helped by the fact that those we got as replacements did not last for more than a season, and that is not good enough for a team that wants to fight for the championship’’.

While declining to discuss much about the impact of limited funding, which he referred to Rosen, George noted that financial difficulties had also played a huge role in the problems that contributed to the Mighty Bulls’ demise.