Online Reporter
Ray Bande
Senior Reporter
A GROUP of players and technical staff who risked life and limb for FC Hunters to gain promotion in the Castle Lager Premier Soccer League are feeling betrayed after the club’s owner, Andrew Gore, sold the club’s franchise without their knowledge or consent.
The players, who helped secure the team’s promotion to the Castle Lager Premier Soccer League, Pacific Storm Eastern Region Division One League, had seen the club as a platform to showcase their talents on a bigger stage.
However, their dreams were dashed when Gore sold the franchise to Pedzai ‘Scott’ Sakupwanya-owned N’ombeyawora without paying their outstanding salaries and bonuses.
The story of betrayal by club owner, Andrew Gore, did not start and end there!
The financial rewards that come with playing for a team gunning for premiership promotion did not materialise at FC Hunters. Their salary payments were made in batches.
While the then club owner, Gore, did well to pay winning bonuses ranging from US$50 to US$80 on time, depending on the opponent at hand because he wanted results, former players who confided in this newspaper on condition of anonymity, said he did not pay the October, November and December monthly salaries of US$120.
These are the outstanding amounts allegedly owed to the players, and resulted in so much hullabaloo in recent weeks, with widespread reports indicating that Gore went to the extent of threatening the players who were demanding their outstanding dues.
The US$65 that some of the players received recently were balances for the October salaries for players who were advanced varying amounts in the past, meaning that by now Gore must have now paid his players up to October last year.
Post Sport has it on good authority that the Marondera tobacco farmer, Gore, who wholly owned the club in Division One, allegedly promised to give the players a ‘token of appreciation’ once the team got promoted.
This remains a promise and whether it will be fulfilled is only for Gore and the heavens to tell.
Again, the story of betrayal by Gore does not start and end there!
The supporters, vendors and service providers who had hoped to watch or do business at Rudhaka Stadium after manoeuvres and pledges to have the facility renovated ahead of FC Hunters’ participation in the Premier Soccer League, might end up having to make do with their usual Division One football in the Mashonaland East provincial capital as the facility currently does not meet PSL standards.
Once again, the story of betrayal by Gore does not start and end there!
Pacific Storm Eastern Region chairman, Wisdom Simba, whose region had hoped to have more teams in the PSL resident in the region, said: “On the issue of FC Hunters selling their franchise, it is an unfortunate issue whereby a team rides on the infrastructure and development provided for by the league for it to become valuable, and one wakes up and do a transaction without the express authority of the owners of the franchise. Like I earlier indicated, we have put some provisions in our statutes to prevent the recurrence of this unfortunate incident where we feel the league was short-changed.”
As it stands, no one really knows which match venue FC Hunters will call home.
Perhaps Gore and his partners in the new club ownership arrangement know whether the club will use Rudhaka Stadium in Marondera or, as widely speculated, The Heart Stadium in Harare.
But at the end of the day, broken promises are worse than rain clouds that do not bring rain, as they say, and former FC Hunters players, supporters, as well as local businesses, will be the first to bear witness to this truism.
Repeated efforts to reach out to Gore through a phone call for a comment were fruitless at the time of going to Press, and written questions sent to him were only met with an “I will call you tomorrow” response.
Ironically, the recent change of FC Hunters’ ownership structure came after Gore had vehemently dismissed social media rumours that he intended to sell their franchise to Northern Region Premiership promotion failures, N’ombeyawora – insisting that they were already preparing for a more challenging 2026 top-flight league season.
Back then, FC Hunters reportedly decided to sell their Premiership franchise to the Pedzai ‘Scott’ Sakupwanya-owned N’ombeyawora, at least according to widely circulated social media messages that surprised many in domestic football circles.
The Marondera-based tobacco farmer, who single-handedly bankrolled FC Hunters to its Premiership promotion, said they were focusing on preparing for Premiership football.
“If anything, we are preparing for life in the Premier League and our preparations are well on course. When we make any decision, we have the rightful channels to speak to our fans and the public in general,” said Gore back then.
