adminSports Reporter
THE Four-Peat – it’s the ultimate badge of honour in the domestic Premiership.
It’s the golden symbol of success on the local front.
Only Dynamos and Highlanders have managed a Four-Peat, winning four league titles on the bounce.
The Glamour Boys did it twice – between 1980 and 1983 and 2011 and 2014.
Bosso did it once – between 1999 and 2002.
Twenty years have passed since Highlanders completed their Four-Peat, with a dominant campaign, in which they ended 20 points clear of runners-up Black Rhinos.
And, as if the football gods are reminding them of those halcyon days, Bosso host an FC Platinum side, chasing their Four-Peat, at Barbourfields, on Sunday.
For the Zvishavane side, it could be another stop-over, in what is turning into a countrywide party, of their historic adventure.
If Norman Mapeza and his men win half of their remaining six games, they will be crowned league champions this season, irrespective of what their remaining rivals do.
As of now, they need just nine points to reach the 70-point mark, a tally which none of their rivals – Chicken Inn and Dynamos – cannot reach.
The best the Gamecocks can get, should they win all their remaining six games, is 69 points, while Dynamos can reach 68 points.
It’s ironic that when Bosso completed their Four-Peat, in 2002, their final game was in Zvishavane, where they beat Shabanie Mine 1-0 at Maglas.
Now, 20 years later, a club from Zvishavane is coming to Barbourfields this weekend for what could be the official start of the celebrations of the FC Platinum Four-Peat heroics.
FC Platinum will become the first club, in the 60-year history of the country’s top-flight league, to complete the Four-Peat, having won their maiden title during the same cycle of success stories.
Dynamos had won five league titles in ’63, ’65, ’79, ’76, and ’78 by the time they started the winning sequence, in 1980, which would earn them the Four-Peat.
Highlanders had already won the league title in 1990 and 1993 by the time they began their Four-Peat winning campaign between ’99 and 2002.
From the chaos of their sensational collapse, in the 2011 season when Dynamos bullied them, FC Platinum have rebuilt themselves into the dominant side in the domestic Premiership.
They have passed all the tests, which the giants of the country’s biggest two cities, have thrown at them and ticked all the boxes.
Their first league championship, in 2017, couldn’t have been more satisfying given they finally found a way to beat the challenge of the Glamour Boys.
Mapeza and his men finished two points clear of Dynamos.
They also appeared to have borrowed the DeMbare template as their uncompromising defence, which only let in 15 goals all season, was the difference.
Remarkably, they scored 15 goals less than the Glamour Boys, during that season, but their superior defensive qualities, took them home.
The next season they won it at a canter, finishing 13 points clear of second-placed Ngezi Platinum Stars.
In 2019, they needed to beat CAPS United in Harare, in a winner-take-all final game of the season, and they did just that, with a 1-0 victory.
Having freshened up their team, with the injection of young blood, it appears the champions are in for a long haul, in terms of writing more success stories.
The Four-Peat hasn’t been won yet but, already, the good money is on them becoming the first local club to win five league titles on the bounce.
That can wait for another day, another season.
Right now, for Walter Musona and his teammates, it’s all about the big party at Barbourfields this weekend, defending their 17-game unbeaten run.
And, it’s all about Operation Four-Peat.
Mathew Masinge
Online Reporter