Open letter to PSL and Zifa

Dear PSL and Zifa

THE year is almost over with attention on both the title and relegation matrices.

All eyes are on the potential winners of the Castle Lager Premiership, Division One and Two Leagues.

Despite incentives from competition managers and those few partners, local players have to be commended for motivating those few corporate backers who are ensuring football stays among the biggest employers in the country, providing entertainment and supporting other businesses through sports tourism.

It has been an exciting season for neutrals who applaud a good move or goal at matches where we will be part of the audience.

For years, I have watched the big teams punished for crowd bad behaviour. In some years the country’s big clubs were paying close to US$25 000 as every match was attracting US$4 000 fines.

The most affected in that have always been Dynamos and Highlanders, two teams commanding very big crowds by our own Zimbabwe standards.

Two teams when everything is okay and competing scales are truly balanced, they shake Zimbabwe when they clash on the field.

It would appear some decades ago, men from small teams, clubs with very few supporters met. In their excitement over allowances, hotel food and accommodation, added to the bright Harare street lights and night life, they decided to be out of touch with reality.

Every aspect of life is guided by norms. These tend to define us or map the way we live and create certain expectations.

Perhaps when they met the agenda was to deal with one specific team or two which have a big following without holistically looking at the broader picture.

Football is a family sport and a game of emotions. Be it rules that should be uniform and applicable to all, match situations or translation of the constitution, it is always subjective with every Jack and Jill with a narration that suits his or her understanding.

I am drawn to a situation where Thabani Ncube wakes up on a Sunday morning. He starts imbibing in the morning, whiling away time with his target to be at Barbourfields Stadium or Rufaro at 3pm for the match.

He started drinking early because there was nothing else to do. Unlike what many term the good old days when people went to stadia as early as 0900 hours, watch Under-12s up to reserve team, today the match day experience without curtain-raisers is a dull afternoon, only illuminated by one or two touches or moves of genius.

In the past very few came drunk to stadia, they would spend close to eight hours at the stadium watching football. Fans got to know and appreciate their own juniors and provided seals of approval for their promotion.

No club has control of Ncube. He makes his own decision to drink and go to a stadium in whatever state.

I find it absurd why clubs should pay heavy fines for rowdy fans that they would not have invited to stadia. Perhaps if it were privilege card holders because they are there at the institutions’ benevolence and are expected to behave.

The thousands that come to stadia do so on their own volition and clubs are made to suffer for their behaviour because of rules crafted by men. Men tend to target specific teams and worse has been witnessed.

Why should the home team suffer alone when there are so many people interested in what it brings to the coffers?

Everyone who gets a cent from Highlanders’ and Dynamos’ big following should have a measure of liability whenever there is crowd trouble.

Referees must take stock, competition managers PSL, provinces and regions must also come into the picture and have some self-introspection on the broader causes of crowd trouble and how it can be dealt with to nip the scourge in the bud.

A few tips
(a) Make match day experience a fun-filled event so that fans are at the stadium three hours before the match.
(b) Use cameras to eliminate repeat offenders, ban forever or get them to surrender themselves at nearest police station two hours before match kick off.
(c) Evaluate weight of match, appoint referees according to level of proficiency.
(d) Bring closure to incidents that cause crowd trouble by announcing what was correct according to the rules of the game so that people learn and forgive or desist from causing trouble because of not knowing rules. Publicise action taken on referees.
(e) Clubs should get liquor licences and sell from within and provide entertainment before kick-off to avoid last minute crowding at turnstiles.

Hopefully at the next PSL and Zifa Assembly meetings people will not be motivated by jealousy of the two big clubs’ but will re-visit the issue of the quantum of punishment.

Thank you, let me curtain raise with Chibuku and finish off my day with a cold Castle.
Regards,
Lovemore Dube (Zimpapers Sports Hub Co-ordinator, Bulawayo)