ROBSON SHARUKO: The race for the championship is between the miners and Dynamos…

praises on the Premiership newboys and describing them as the most organised football club in the country.
I’ve been to Zvishavane before, just to see the FC Platinum set-up, and I have to concede that there is order in the way they run their football club and, given the chaotic nature of most of our teams, they seem refreshingly different.

Obviously, Hwange’s management have a right to feel betrayed by such a conclusion because they have not only run their club in an orderly way but have done it for far longer when compared to FC Platinum who just came on board this year and have had four coaches taking charge of the team at different intervals this season.
Little Chicken Inn, who are giving Adam Ndlovu his apprenticeship in his new career as a coach, where he is the assistant to Philani “Beefy” Ncube, have shown stability throughout their maiden season in the Premiership and could feel justified if they claimed they were the most organised football team.

But when you consider that FC Platinum have turned the old Mandava Stadium into a modern ground, which they will run, have invested heavily in the youths and their Under-19 team has just won promotion into the Central Region Division One league and they have a good club house that is being improved all the time, you can see that they are probably a class apart.
The club has a thriving business, in which it sells replica kits to its fans, and on Match Day, Mandava turns into a sea of green-and-white, with all the supporters wearing genuine replica material, and the team’s officials believe their marketing ventures will pay off handsomely the club will become self-sufficient soon.

But FC Platinum are largely viewed with suspicion, especially in Harare and Bulawayo, where a number of people feel that they use their financial muscle beyond the acceptable in the game with some alleging that they are using money to influence the outcome of some of their matches.
Noone has come up with evidence to back such claims, and it’s unlikely that anyone will get such evidence, but at Lafarge last Saturday, when FC Platinum took on Gunners, the majority of the home team’s fans were certain that the match officials were trying to influence the outcome of the game in favour of the platinum miners.
Cuthbert Chitima, the Gunners’ president, stormed out of the VIP Enclosure at Lafarge on Saturday, claiming that the match officials had twisted the playing field and it wasn’t level any more and they were

allegedly trying to push through a result that would favour FC Platinum.
While Chitima staged his protest publicly, it’s a subject that is being discussed in the bars and restaurants of Harare and there is a feeling, among a lot of people in the capital, that FC Platinum are trying to win silverware using unorthodox, including their big financial muscle.
I haven’t accused FC Platinum of dumping the spirit of Fair Play because I have no evidence to back such claims and, while the Dynamos fans who were backing Gunners on Saturday complained bitterly about the referee’s decision to drag the game beyond the stipulated four minutes of added time, it’s not enough to lead to a conclusion that he had been compromised.

We have seen Dynamos, itself, also getting the benefit of extended added time, and that certainly didn’t mean the Glamour Boys were buying the referees.
When Manchester United’s opponents complained that the Red Devils were getting the benefit of extended added time, the ‘Until We Score’ period, they certainly didn’t make wild claims that United were buying referees and the match officials were compromised.

Yes, the referee’s decision not to show FC Platinum ‘keeper Tafadzwa Dube a red card, for wrestling a Gunners’ forward to the ground, was diabolical because he saw the incident and, somehow, against all the dictates of his profession, decided to brand a yellow card for such violent conduct.
Given that a red would have meant Tafadzwa Dube missing, not only this weekend’s Mbada Diamonds Cup quarter-final, ironically against Gunners, and one other key league game against Shabanie (home), the feeling of injustice among the FC Platinum opponents fuels all the suspicions.

But referees are human and can also make monumental errors of judgment, in the heat of the moment, without having been compromised by any of the contesting parties.
And most fair minded people will also look at the incident at Rufaro on Sunday when Murape Murape, already sitting on a yellow, was somehow not sent off for trying to push Bekhi Ndlovu off the field, after he had been substituted and was walking at a snail pace, as further proof that such refereeing errors of judgment.

Certainly, you can’t accuse that referee who handled the Dynamos/Bosso game of being compromised for not branding the second yellow card on Murape that would have reduced DeMbare to 10 men, at a stage when the game was still tied 1-1 and in the balance, and which could have altered the outcome of the match.
So, in the same circumstances, is it fair then for a lot of people in the capital to accuse FC Platinum of compromising the playing field simply because of a referee’s mistake and the same isn’t done when similar mistakes occur in other matches?

At Lafarge on Saturday, there was a strong penalty appeal for FC Platinum, which the referee turned down, but it appears all that has been remembered from that game is that incident involving ‘keeper Dube and, of course, the ‘Until We Score’ added time that went on to eternity.
Someone even went to the extent of sending a message to The Herald’s text feedback forum thanking Moses Chunga for resisting FC Platinum’s advances and playing by the rules and ultimately leading his

Gunners to that sensational 2-1 win over the Premiership leaders.
You can see from such messages that the belief that there is more to FC Platinum’s rise than just the sum of their talents is very strong. Maybe when these people look at the FC Platinum set-up and see that Joseph Mususa, who until last year was the Zimbabwe Soccer Referees’ Association chairman, is now the club’s administrator, they believe he still has influence – direct or otherwise – on the referees who were his lieutenants not so long ago. It’s a tough call either way but when you take time to speak to the FC Platinum president, Nathan Shoko, you feel you are in the company of a football guy who will tell you repeatedly that they invested in the best possible players, and spent a fortune on that, because they simply wanted to win on the field.

He even resents the media’s tendency to call them Moneybags saying it’s an insult to the efforts that his leadership and scores of others, who work for this club, are putting into the team to turn it into a success story.
Maybe a lot of people are judging FC Platinum harshly and maybe it’s because the race for the championship is between the miners and Dynamos, it has turned into FC Platinum versus the people and, just like France in tomorrow’s Rugby World Cup final against New Zealand, very few want them to win.
It’s like asking turkeys or hens to vote whether they want Christmas to be celebrated this year.

There Is Life In This Premiership
There were 20 000 paying fans at Rufaro on Sunday for the Dynamos/Highlanders’ game and, if the Glamour Boys had handled their gates well and thousands of supporters had not been frustrated forcing them to leave, we could possibly have had twice that number in that ground.
FC Platinum came to Harare with three busloads of their colourful fans and, even though their match against Gunners was being played at the same time as the Liverpool/Manchester United tie, there was a good and lively crowd at Lafarge on Saturday afternoon. If there is something special that the domestic Premiership can boast about, then it has to be the patronage of its loyal fans and while most of them rightly feel that the standards on the field have taken a knock, they still come on Match Days because its has become a part of their lives.

There are also a number of rough diamonds in the game that make it worth watching and I can spend days watching the Gunners’ training sessions and consecutive weeks, watching their matches, without getting any sense of boredom because I feel I get more value seeing those boys than probably watching Kaizer Chiefs or Orlando Pirates.
I’m not the only one who has been bewitched by these young Gunners and at Lafarge on Saturday, I met the Reuters correspondent in Harare, Nelson Banya, and he told me he believes Moses Chunga and his boys are easily the best team in the domestic Premiership today and that they have been the best performing side, since Bambo’s return, buttresses that point.

Just take time off your schedule to watch Lloyd Masakusi, Phineas Bhamusi, Tapiwa Dephistara and Michelle Katsvairo in action for these Gunners and you will certainly join the big number of people who are falling in love with these boys and this project.

A number of seasoned analysts and commentators have already said that Leonard Fiyado is destined for the stars and, the more that you watch him in action, the more that you believe in that gospel.
The enduring image from their win over FC Platinum on Saturday came in the 68th minute when some lovely touches confused the visitors’ tiring defence, largely built on old legs, and when the ball was squared to Cliff Sekete, the control oozed class and the execution, a thunderous show that flew past Dube as if he was an invisible man, was first class.

Ours is still a very poor Premiership, still shunned by a SuperSport that has the temerity to show us that hogwash, disguised as football, played in the Kenyan top-flight league, shunned by its national broadcaster as if it doesn’t exist, shunned by the majority of the sponsors who have budgets for sport.

But it has a value and SuperSport can’t create Cliff Sekete in Kenya, no matter how much money they put into the football there, because such talents are born and not made.
There were 20 000 paying fans at Rufaro on Sunday, and if the Harare City Council was also as more concerned with maintaining the ground as it is in getting cash from gate receipts and all the 32 gates were working, we could have had 40 000 fans in that ground.

And, all those people can’t be wrong – there is life in our domestic Premiership and that’s why I watch it.

Has ZBC Finally Seen The Light?
One of the refreshing things this weekend was the decision by ZBC to broadcast the domestic Premiership results on radio and television after having ignored the league for the better part of the year. Hopefully, soon we will start seeing the television cameras coming back to Rufaro, Gwanzura, Mucheke, Mandava and Barbourfields and live matches, in the final countdown in the race for the Premiership title, coming back on national television.

We were beginning to appear as if we were a lost tribe, one of those that you see on CNN’s programmes living in distant forests and untouched by the changes happening to our world, who somehow found the value in screening the English Premiership matches while our own games were taboo on our television.
Last week my Grade Five boy Kalusha told me that he now likes Wayne Rooney because he has seen on television that his hair has been patched back on his head.

That’s the power of television.
I asked him if he also likes Cliff Sekete or Archie Gutu, and he was totally confused about the people I was talking about.
You see what happens to our children when all that they see on television are the foreign football stars?
When we were growing up, ZBC played a big part in bringing us closer to the stars of that era and I still remember that my first glimpse of Stanford “Stix” Mtizwa was on my father’s black-and-white television, you know the old box ones, on Game of the Week.
Tommy Ballantyne (remember him?) made us get closer to our stars.

Did Super Diski Fall Flat?
The failure by Bafana Bafana and the Warriors to qualify, not only for the 2012 Nations Cup finals but also for the 2010 Nations Cup showcase, has provoked serious questions about the quality of Super Diski. After we coming short, together with our neighbours south of the Limpopo, because of the technical deficiencies of Super Diski and the quality, or lack of it, of the coaching in that mega-rich league?
Or is this just a mere coincidence?

The Warriors fielded EIGHT players, in their starting XI in Cape Verde, who are active players in Super Diski – Kapini, Mapemba, Mwanjali, Sweswe, Nengomasha, Katsande and Mushekwi.
The ninth, talismanic striker Knowledge Musona, only left Super Diski in May and only two players – Ovidy Karuru and Vusa Nyoni – did not have a Super Diski connection. Nyoni plays in Belgium.
Bafana Bafana fielded EIGHT players, in their starting XI against Sierra Leone, who are active in Super Diski – Itumeleng Khune, Morgan Gould, Siyabonga Sangweni, Thandayise Khuboni, Andile Jali, Siphiwe

Tshabalala, Bernard Parker and Katlego Mphela.
The other three – Siboniso Gaxa, Daylon Claasen and Anele Ngcongca – are all based in Belgium. Ironically Bafana Bafana won two out of their six games, the same number as the Warriors and they all ended their campaign with a goal difference of plus two.
Maybe, when you come to think of it, our fate is intertwined in the Super Diski razzmatazz where substance is a commodity in short supply.

Letter From South Africa
Dear Robson Sharuko
As we grow up we look up to certain people, for strength and inspiration.
There is something magical about our heroes, our source of inspiration, they give us wings and they give us every possible strength and motivation we ever need.
People play an influential role, like that deep voice within that gives us strength to fly, and we believe we can, and we end up reaching out to our dreams.

Sometime ago, late in the 1990s, I started reading your articles, l read them to the end, sometimes l would not pronounce the words so well and my father would read them out for me. There was something remarkable about the way you conveyed your message, it was undeniable that you much loved the Warriors, you talked endless about the Warriors, you sang their praises and when the Warriors were beaten l would feel the emotion in your expression. I would pick up the fresh wound with in you, the raging wounds of defeat.
I began to like football and the Warriors, because l knew many players back then, but because of you. My love affair with DeMbare began back then, too.

Yes, I love the blue half of the capital, there was something special about the way you wrote about the Glamour Boys, the way you loved the Glamour Boys so much.
Of course, you might not openly acknowledge it, but I saw the way you wrote, and each time I read about DeMbare, my face would light up in fascination, you put your heart to it and l knew l was going to possess that blue heart for life.

Yes, your articles changed my way of writing, I always tried to sound like you, arrange my words like you, arrange my thoughts like you, I would introduce my ideas like you, and I would develop them the way you do.
And, yes of course, I did well in my English. I had A’s in all my English exams up to High School.
I always thought l was going to enrol at a Journalism School, I even wrote for The Sunday Mail’s Bridge and, yes, about sport and football.
Now I am enrolled in a Law School and throughout the course my school life, I have noticed that l can’t write just a few lines, I write pages, for my point to be driven home.

The point is every single Saturday, I flip to the back pages and read your stuff.
I have a blue heart, I am DeMbarean for life, and because of my blue heart, I have accommodated Chelsea.
Every time you write about the Man U stuff, I am always tempted to shift positions and follow the Red Devils, but my blue heart keeps me far from it.

You remember the first time the Warriors qualified for the Afcon finals? Man, it was electrifying, the vibe swept the whole country and those were the days man.
I remember the articles and the one which I still remember was the titled ‘The Story of the Minister and I’, and that was a good one, it was awesome and incredibly great.
Maybe 20 years from now, Dynamos would have lifted the Champions League a number of times and maybe more Zimbabwean teams would have done just that in that period. Maybe the Warriors would have won the Nations Cup and played in the World Cup finals and maybe gone all the way.

One thing for sure, it’s inevitable that changes are taking place in Zimbabwean football and we hope the changes will be for the good of everyone and people will serve the game and the teams with love and respect for public. And maybe we will have a good set of players, adequate resources, motivated founders and a great coach at Dynamos.
Maybe a woman will lead the men at our club and we will do wonders in the African safari.

It has been a ride, mate.
Regards
Bee Chiyekete (Miss)
Rhodes University
Grahamstown
South Africa
Come on United!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Chicharitooooooooooooooooooooooooo
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
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