Hong Kong tourney to determine sevens rugby future

and there is a variety of business reasons why this has not happened.
The HKS, for now, is the express ticket that might take Zimbabwean rugby’s status to a level befitting of its potential — if the Cheetahs get their act together.
Victory against Spain in the first match would have lessened the burden on the team in the group stages but unfortunately the Cheetahs’ defensive flaws have a knack for appearing at the worst of times.
Losing 19-5 set Zimbabwe a step back in the plot leading to the big idea, which is the potential professionalisation of sevens rugby in the country.
The Cheetahs squad in Hong Kong is the best team that Zimbabwe has at the moment, they might be experienced and effective but after their time, there might not be a team good enough to step into their shoes at the same standard.
Unlike cricket and football, which have full time sportsmen, rugby does not yet enjoy the same setting, the bulk of players in the Sables and Cheetahs are either part time rugby working full time jobs in the corporate world or only a few playing professionally overseas.
I noticed a large difference between the Goshawks and the Cheetahs, bearing in mind that the Goshawks are supposed to be the next Cheetahs candidates.
But how can they reach there soon and be at par with the Cheetahs when there is no structure to support their necessary transition into national duty?
How long will it take to produce another Manase Sita, Jacque Leitao or Wesley Mbanje?
It takes funding, lots of it, and core membership for now is the easiest way for Zimbabwe to get some of this money flowing in.
Rugby has been reinstated into the Olympics after over 85 years for the 2016 and 2020 games.
Becoming an Olympic sport will allow for grants to come through, core IRB membership will inject another grant that comes with standard requirements to establish professional structures.
All these will be injected into national development and we can transform from our current state of under-development to a more defined certified player pathway system into the Cheetahs.
South Africa is a great example of this and we saw that the SA Sevens Academy, a group comprising mainly of former school boys, was able to give our national side a difficult time, after they had just been trained for barely a year after leaving school.
Zimbabwe rugby already has a potent schools league, our Under-19 team has proved to be very competitive at the annual Craven Week but it all ends there.
Afterwards only a small fraction of that huge pool of players will make a career out of the sport.
To think that talented players like the Sables’ fly-half Tichafara Makwanya has to work full time at a local tobacco company as his main source of livelihood really hurts.
We have already lost Brian Mujati, Tonderai Chavhanga and Tendai ‘Beast’ Mutawarira to the Springboks and we stand to lose more of that quality of players.
Every junior player realises there are few prospects for a good rugby career at home and more of them are getting college scholarships in the USA and South Africa.
There is an even greater chance of these players turning their backs on Zimbabwe in favour of lucrative club contracts across the world — and who would blame them?
Dirk Viljeon, the Sponsorship and Public Relations manager at Dominus Sport, said to me that rugby can only because a productive enterprise if it manages to create a brand for itself and its players — currently none of that is in existence.
The potential is there as seen from the thousands that watched the Spar sevens tournament but you cannot expect the same crowd regularly because fans easily lose interest in low profile and non-iconic players, just as they would flock the stadium to watch a Barcelona v Manchester United match.
In the business of modern sports, television and the rest of the media are the main sources of revenue.
You might get special cases like the Vodacom Blue Bulls who can easily rack in over half a million dollars in ticket sales alone for an 80-minute game, but still the major chunk of the money flows from broadcast rights and merchandising.
Zimbabwe might not reach such mega levels of sports marketing because of numbers and other factors but at least there is a ray of hope guaranteeing a new player a future in the business of sport.
Locally the market is starved of well managed quality sports entertainment that is suitable for a universal local audience.
The sponsors just need a quality product they can affiliate to, just as the cricket and hockey have done; in the last decade crowds have shifted from traditional sports like soccer and diversified in their thousands to cricket and other sports.
Rugby can enjoy the same but only if the Cheetahs stick to basics, cover defensive flaws and maximise on their natural pace and agility.
Inevitably there is a cost attached to every private and public event, even Churches know the need for money to continue existing at the bare minimum.
Rugby is a sport that has for years been sustained by voluntary labour, sponsors, well-wishers and an unexplainable following that keeps it afloat — basically everyone has sacrificed a great deal for the Cheetahs to make meaningful presence on the international arena.
Therefore it only deserves that all of Zimbabwe’s rugby faithful be rewarded with the chance to continue their community service and convert it into something that is now due to the country.
The Cheetahs’ core membership pursuit is of national importance as it is possibly the turning point of local rugby as we know it.
Attaining it will be the first part of the process as we will have to maintain the new levels of production so that we remain a core member of in the IRB sevens circuit.
Jeffrey Danai Murimbechi is a rugby commentator who writes for The Saturday Herald, the newspaper with the biggest sports coverage in Zimbabwe.