‘No coaching vacancy at Highlanders’

Sikhumbuzo Moyo, Senior Sports Reporter
HIGHLANDERS have refuted rumours that they are head-hunting a coach to replace Mark Harrison.

Harrison’s salary was being paid by unnamed club members, who are reportedly running the show at Bosso, including deciding which players the club should sign.

The nomadic Briton, who had stints with Caps United and Harare City on the local scene, penned a two-year agreement with Bosso, but only took charge of one official match, the Castle Challenge Cup that Bosso lost 0-2 to FC Platinum, before all sporting activities were grounded by the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic and subsequent lockdown.

Bosso and Harrison then reached a mutual understanding under which the coach returned to Britain since the club could not be paying his salary while there was no football activity.

Sources told Chronicle Sport that the benefactors had decided against retaining Harrison to head the Highlanders dugout and were instead looking for a local coach to take up that responsibility.

A number of names have been touted as possible Bosso head coaches should Harrison not be retained, with current assistant coaches Mandla ‘‘Lulu’’ Mpofu and Bekithemba ‘‘Super’’ Ndlovu remaining as assistants.

However, Highlanders public relations officer Ronald Moyo vehemently denied the rumours, saying the status quo remained unchanged and Harrison would resume his duties once the authorities issue a Covid-19 all-clear sign.

“No, we are not (looking for a coach),” said Moyo yesterday.

He said painful lessons from the past had been learnt, hence their decision to allow him to return home instead of accumulating a clearly avoidable debt.

“The position hasn’t changed from what we and the coach said when he left. We will definitely engage him to come back in the event that we find adequate funding for his upkeep. Having learnt from our previous mistake as a club, we want to live within our means. We want to try and avoid a scenario where the club finds itself sinking in debt again. As we said when the coach left, resources permitting, coach Mark Harrison will definitely come back to continue the project he had started. A decision will be made and communicated either way,” said Moyo.