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Sharuko on Saturday
THEY went to Rufaro on Sunday, lured by the magic of a powerful romance that has survived the test of time, defied the temptations that usually ruin long distance love affairs and survived brutal winters and stormy days.
Praise Zenenga and Douglas Mpondi, two childhood friends back home on vacation from their United States base, were last Sunday lured by the desire to once again cast their eyes on the enduring beauty of their blue-and-white football flame.
The club they fell in love with during their years of innocence, back in the days when such pilgrimages to this old stadium, in this old neighbourhood, were weekly and regular Sunday adventures.
Back to this grand old arena sandwiched by the decaying block of flats to the east, the Mbare Musika to the south, the main road towards Highfield to the west and a graveyard, settled adjacent to the main road that leads into the city centre, to the north.
The Mbare that was the home of Charles Mabika, the legend with a golden voice, whose animated celebration of the domestic Premiership, via the medium of radio, used to provide a powerful soundtrack to the magical events that used to unfold inside this grand old stadium.
The same Mbare that would, with the passage of time and thanks to Mabika’s creativity, provide an identity to this team to a new generation of fans and football writers.
Those who began to dump its old name, Dynamos, in favour of the rhythm and romance of its new identity, DeMbare, the one Mabika coined sometime in the ’80s and which found a willing constituency that has, like Phillip Pirrip in Charles Dickens’ classic novel, Great Expectations, stuck with it since then.
Those who have cared to read this blockbuster novel, which represents one of the greatest literature works of our time, will certainly never forget its opening line about how its dominant character changed his name and, like Dynamos, assumed a new identity.
“My father’s family name being Pirrip, and my Christian name Phillip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip, so I called myself Pip and came to be called Pip,” he says.
The same Mbare that was the home of Stanford “Stix” Mtizwa, the one with the magical feet whose talent became a big part of the driving force on which an enduring rivalry between their beloved team and CAPS United was built in the ’80s during a golden period when domestic football provided quality where today it provides quantity.
The same Stix who was so good, as a boy wonder, opponents of his neighbourhood team, in their street football battles, used to demand to be allowed to field an extra man, every time he was part of the contests, to try and cope with his sheer talent.
For, in him, they saw two players, not one, and they had to be allowed to throw in an extra man, to have 12 players on their side, for them to have a remote chance of coping with the quality this little magician brought to his side.
The same Mbare that was the home to Sam Dauya and a number of his colleagues when, in 1963, they decided to form a football club that represented their black interests and called it Dynamos.
Little did they know that, with time, it would transform itself into the heartbeat of domestic club football, the ultimate symbol of success on the local front, strong enough to challenge for the right to be champions of Africa, at some point in its lifetime some 20 years ago.
And powerful enough to attract millions of fans.
The same Mbare that was home to Allan Hlatshwayo, the man they called Teacher, who rose from the ranks of those Dynamos founding fathers to become the first black Sports Editor of this newspaper and whose great work here inspired a generation of writers.
The same Mbare that was home to Rufaro, the spiritual home of their Dynamos, where 42 years ago, these Glamour Boys produced one of the finest performance by a local football club in history as they powered to a 4-1 demolition of a very strong Orlando Pirates on a rain-swept day to lift the Southern African Club Championship.
The Pirates of Jomo Sono, arguably the best player to emerge from that country who was then at the very peak of his athletic powers, proved no match for those turbo-charged Glamour Boys, with the Harare giants erasing a 3-5 first leg defeat in Johannesburg, to emerge triumphant.
BUT FOR PRAISE AND GILBERT, SOMETHING HAS CHANGED DRAMATICALLY
But, for Praise and Douglas, something had changed.
Of course, they were back in Mbare and, of course, they were back at Rufaro, but it was difficult for them to link anything they were seeing on the pitch, and even off the pitch, to the club of their dreams — the one that had fulfilled their football wishes back in the years when they were frequent visitors to this stadium.
There was intoxicating mediocrity, where they used to see quality, there was ugliness where they used see beauty, there was impotence where they used to see potency, there were a lot of ordinary players, where they used to see extraordinary athletes, and there was a lot of quantity where they used to see a lot of quality.
Even the fans appeared to have deserted their team, the so-called people’s team, with only a few hundreds of the loyal ones still sticking around at Rufaro on Sunday, where capacity crowds running into thousands of fans used to be the order of the day, back in the days when the two were regular visitors to Rufaro.
Of course, they had heard that their beloved club was now an imitation of the original DeMbare that used to represent greatness, they had heard the glamour had since left its ranks and had been warned to pray for the best, but also expect the worst.
But nothing had prepared them for what they saw on Sunday — players barely good enough to feature in a Sunday social football contest, a collection of misfits masquerading as representatives of this massive football institution and trying their best, or is it their worst, to conceal their obvious shortcomings at this level.
And, after 15 minutes of this no-show, they rang me, from inside the stadium, and said they could not bear watching this fake reality show anymore.
The pain of being forced to watch these remains of their beloved club, like fans of an ageing prized fighter watching him lying on the canvas, having been battered in a first round knockout, by a younger and fitter opponent, proving too much for them to bear over one-and-half hours.
And, just like that, they left the ground, saying goodbye to a stadium that used to be home sweet home when things were rosy, saying goodbye to a team that used to provide them with memories to last a lifetime, back in the days when these Glamour Boys punched according to their weight.
In that confusion, as they searched for answers about what had happened to their team, how their beloved Glamour Boys had become this ordinary, bombarding me with questions that I could not answer, they marched out of the stadium with broken hearts and tears in their eyes.
Of course, the remains of their Glamour Boys lost again that day — beaten in Harare, for the first time, by a club whose professionalism gave it a financial muscle to fish in Dynamos’ pond of disgruntled players and technical staff, the team which some commentators described as “DeMbare Rural”, it even adopted the fading giants’ primary blue-and-white colours.
Lost to a team coached by one of their own, Tonderai Ndiraya, the one these Glamour Boys had somehow chased away, despite his loyalty to the cause of an establishment he joined as a kid and the promise of the potential he had shown when he was handed the job to coach DeMbare.
Lost to a team whose assistant coach, Gift Muzadzi, was one of the immortals who played for them in that Champions League final against ASEC Mimosas in Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire.
And lost to a team which, on that Sunday, fielded six former DeMbare sons in its starting XI, and whose winning goal on the day, was scored by one of their old boys – Kelvin Bulaji.
This was DeMbare’s EIGHTH loss in 20 league matches, a team that failed to win any of their first SEVEN matches, a team that has failed to score in EIGHT games, a team that now has half the number of points which Ngezi Platinum have – with 14 matches still to play – a team which has conceded FIVE goals in matches against a hopeless Shabanie side that has only won TWO of their 20 games.
Six years ago, the Glamour Boys lost only THREE league matches all season, five years ago, they lost only FIVE games all season and four years ago they also lost only FIVE games all season and now, with 14 matches still to play this season, they have already lost EIGHT games.
And conceded more than TWENTY goals.
They say true fans stick with their team, in good and bad times, and the real fans are those who remain supporting their side even when the days are dark and the winters are cold, but there is a certain degree that a club can take its fans for granted and still expect them to remain loyal to the cause.
Last season, the owners of Kaizer Chiefs found themselves being deserted by their fans, for a good reason, with the Amakhosi struggling to get even a thousand supporters at their league matches.
And the supporters of Moroka Swallows kept believing, just like that band which kept playing when Titanic was sinking, until their beloved club collapsed.
THIS ISN’T DEMBARE AND, SADLY, IT DESTROYS THE APPEAL OF THE PREMIERSHIP
Praise and Gilbert are certainly not going to watch another Dynamos game, during their vacation, because – as they told me on Sunday — it’s not worth it and the pain inflicted by seeing the remains, the carcass of what used to be their beloved Glamour Boys, is just unbearable.
And, sadly, they are not the only ones.
When was the last time you saw Freeman Kembo, as devoted a Dynamos fan as they will ever come, at a match featuring these Glamour Boys, when was the last time you saw Cecil Gombera, as passionate a DeMbare fan as they will ever come, at a match featuring this team?
When was the last time you saw Doug Mamvura, as dedicated a Dynamos fan as they will ever come, at a match featuring these Glamour Boys and when was the last time you saw Roger Nhambu, as passionate a DeMbare fan as they will ever come, at a match featuring this team?
When was the last time you saw Godfrey Japajapa, Douglas Nyakutsikwa, Douglas Mukwaiwa, you name them, guys who would never miss a DeMbare match, at the team’s matches, and they are not the only ones because the numbers don’t lie and thousands have been staying away.
The new club president Solomon Sanyamandwe was refreshingly honest, something which these fading giants need right now as they look into a mirror that is giving them an image they all don’t want to see, when he said the majority of the players at his team were not good enough.
”I strongly believe the team doesn’t have the right players,” he said this week. ”They lack quality and under the circumstances it’s difficult to judge the performance of the coach.
”Clearly he (Lloyd Mutasa) doesn’t have the right players and it will be foolish to blame the coach if the team doesn’t perform to expectations.”
That the current Dynamos players are a both a mockery and an insult to the reputation of this institution is something that I raised in this column a few months ago and, for that, I received a lot of criticism from some of the club’s fans who said my analysis was not only toxic but was a blow below the belt.
I described them as misfits who should never be allowed to come anywhere closer to this team and that they are doing so is a sign of how far these Glamour Boys have lost their way and become so ordinary.
Everyone associated with them, in terms of having the mandate to provide leadership, should be asking himself or herself some tough questions of how he or she has contributed to the decline of this powerhouse.
It’s a shame the Glamour Boys have allowed themselves to be reduced into such a shell and the tragedy with all this is that when Dynamos catch a cold, as is the case right now, the entire domestic Premiership catches a bad flu.
Attendance figures plummet, the league loses its glitter, sponsors stay away and even newspapers, who ride on readership for revenue, also take a beating in terms of circulation figures.
It’s something which even the English Premiership, the world’s most watched football league, cannot afford.
“It’s a double-edged sword,” English Premier League chief executive Richard Scudamore told Bloomberg two years ago as Manchester United struggled under David Moyes.
“WHEN YOUR MOST POPULAR CLUB ISN’T DOING AS WELL, THAT COSTS YOU INTEREST AND AUDIENCE.
“THERE ARE A LOTS OF FANS AROUND THE WORLD WHO WISH MANCHESTER UNITED WERE WINNING AGAIN.”
He could have been speaking about Dynamos and about Praise and Gilbert.
To God Be The Glory!
Come on Warriors!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Khamaldinhoooooooooooooooooo!
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Chat with me on Facebook, follow me on Twitter @Chakariboy, interact with me on Viber or read my material in The Southern Times or on www.sportszone.co.zw. You can also interact with me on the informative ZBC weekly television football magazine programme, Game Plan, where I join the legendary Charles “CNN” Mabika and producer Craig “Master Craig” Katsande every Wednesday night at 21.15pm.
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