adminCharles Mabika Special Correspondent
LOCAL football was plunged into shock and sadness after the founder and former director of now defunct top-flight side, Douglas Warriors, Douglas “Dougie” Tanyanyiwa, passed away this week at the Avenues Clinic where he had been admitted on Saturday for a leg operation.
Tanyanyiwa was also a long-standing supporter of Premiership giants Dynamos and English side Arsenal.
In fact, he had nicknamed his Douglas Warriors team “The Gunners,” because of his affection for the North London side.
But it is perhaps his undying love for DeMbare, which touched a lot of the team’s followers since the ‘80s when he and his close friend, Thomson Musindo (who passed away in the early 2000s), used to assist the Glamour Boys in various capacities.
Tanyanyiwa and Musindo would pay for the team’s travel and accommodation expenses since the days of the Jockoniah Nhekairo-led leadership in the ‘80s.
Nhekairo had even offered to co-opt Tanyanyiwa into the club’s executive committee, a move which the big administrator politely turned down, choosing to continue helping out the side financially from a distance.
The death of Musindo, coupled with the never-ending leadership squabbles at DeMbare, finally jolted “Dougie” into forming his own team and in 2001, he founded Zimbabwe’s version of “The Gunners” — Douglas Warriors.
I was a regular visitor at his Douglas Car Sales premises along Kenneth Kaunda Avenue (he was also a successful car salesman and I was one his many satisfied customers) and his favourite three topics were his beloved Douglas Warriors, Arsenal and, of course, Dynamos.
He always bemoaned the perennial off-the-pitch rumblings at the club and would be at pains to look for solutions.
His other reason in forming Douglas Warriors was that he wanted to build a firm foundation where young, talented players would move to bigger clubs and that dream paid dividends.
Exciting layers like Evans Gwekwerere, Admire Dzvukamanja, Lovemore Makwavarara, Tawanda Muparati, Raphael Manuvire — to name, but a few — sprung from Tanyanyiwa’s diving board to greener pastures in and outside the country.
And that alone, made him smile every time he talked about his former players.
“Nhai CNN indava vari kutungamira bhora redu kwese kwese mazuva ano vari more concerned about money?” was a question he sometimes asked me each time I stopped by at his business premises.
When Douglas Warriors disbanded because of the tough economic environment in 2005, a part of “Dougie” also died.
You could see and feel it as he tried unsuccessfully to bring the “Gunners” back to life.
And, sadly on the same day that he was wheeled into the operation theatre, his other beloved club, DeMbare, were being edged 0-1 by their fierce city rivals, CAPS United, at the National Sports Stadium.
Many English football journalists continue to describe the late Nottingham Forest manager, Brian Clough, as “the manager that England never had”.
I am one who will always claim that “Dougie was the “administrator that Zimbabwe never had at national level”.
I sincerely hope that our present club and national administrators will take a leaf from the voluminous docket of the man who was referred to as “Father Zimbabwe of Football” by his Douglas Warriors players.
Bla Dougie, rest in eternal peace.
Online Reporter