adminmounting complaints of poor match officiating threatening to taint the title and relegation battles as the Premiership enters its home stretch.
There have been complaints by a number of PSL teams against biased and poor refereeing as a number of clubs either fight for their top-flight survival or gun for the championship title.
Matters, however, came to a head when Gunners complained against the manner in which the referees handled their back-to-back league and cup games against log leaders FC Platinum at Lafarge and in Hwange.
Despite winning the league game at Lafarge 2-1, Gunners’ coach Moses Chunga and club director Cuthbert Chitima complained bitterly that the referees appeared to be trying to influence the outcome in FC Platinum’s favour.
Chunga was also not amused with the way Bulawayo referee Albert Mbuse, who took charge of their game against FC Platinum in a Mbada Diamonds Cup quarter-final tie at the Colliery, handled the game.
The Gunners coach was eventually ejected from the bench for constantly remonstrating with the referees but not before he retorted that “the referee (Mbuse) should have expelled himself first”.
In that cup encounter the platinum miners prevailed after a penalty shootout. FC Platinum goalkeeper Tafadzwa Dube was somehow not sent off, despite pushing a Gunners’ player to the ground at
Lafarge, and rather than being shown a red card, he received a yellow card from the referee.
That meant Dube survived to play in the next match and, as fate might have it, he was man-of-the-match when FC Platinum defeated Gunners in the Mbada Diamond Cup quarter-finals at the Colliery.
Critics have questioned the power that former Zimbabwe Soccer Referees’ Association chairman, Joseph Mususa, still wields in a fraternity that he was leading until last year.
Mususa is the club administrator at FC Platinum. Zifa chief executive Jonathan Mashingaidze on Thursday noted the complaints against the referees and wrote to PSL chief executive Kenny Ndebele advising him that the mother body was addressing the complaints.
The letter was also copied to Zifa president Cuthbert Dube and all the soccer mother body’s board members as well as referees committee secretary Tendai Bwanya.
“The Zimbabwe Football Association is in receipt of your correspondence of 26th October 2011, pertaining to the above (complaint letter from Gunners Football Club) and hereby acknowledge its contents.
“Please be advised that the association has noted with great concern the poor match officiating trend that is obtaining in the Premier League.
“The association condemns poor match officiating and shall make sure that the referees committee attends to the queries and complaints raised by the league and appropriate remedial action is taken care thereof.
“The association can ill-afford the luxury of allowing the game of football to be defaced by corrupt, incompetent and greedy individuals.
“We have forwarded the complaint to the referees committee, whereupon we shall favour your esteemed office with a position,” Mashingaidze said.
Acting Zifa Referees committee chairperson Samukeliso Silangeni is also in the eye of the storm in the wake of the complaints amid allegations that she is part of the confusion that has engulfed the refereeing fraternity.
Silangeni was thrust at the helm of the referees’ body following the suspension of Zifa second vice-president Kenny Marange to pave the way for the investigations of the former Fifa referee’s role in the Asiagate scam.
However, a number of clubs are understood to have questioned why Silangeni appears to be sympathetic to and continues to appoint the same officials for whom serious complaints would have been lodged against without allegedly taking any action to deal with the complaints.
It is also against the background of the mounting complaints that Ndebele wrote to Zifa on behalf of the aggrieved Premiership clubs.
The conduct of match officials in the final countdown to the Premiership race was also expected to come up for discussion at the Zifa board meeting in Harare yesterday amid calls by Dube to all the leagues to “exercise Fair Play and ensure a logical conclusion to the 2011 season”.
It is in matches involving the title-chasing trio of FC Platinum, Dynamos and Motor Action and those battling against relegation such as Shabanie Mine, Shooting Stars, Kiglon, Zimbabwe Saints, Black Mambas, Monomotapa and Masvingo United that the conduct of referees will particularly be under scrutiny.
Online Reporter