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Ellina Mhlanga Sports Reporter
WAS Chegutu West Member of Parliament Dexter Nduna right to order the Northern Region Division One leadership to let fans get free entrance into a Yadah TV Knock-out Cup quarter-final?
The Zifa Northern Region leadership, and one of the two clubs set to meet in the clash, Black Mambas, have all said that the legislator overstepped his mandate.
Northern Region Division One soccer league chairman Willard Manyengavana on Wednesday said they had to reschedule the quarter-final match between Flame Lilly and Black Mambas to Chinhoyi.
Yadah Knock-out Cup matches have been spread to various venues and Pfupajena was supposed to host Flame Lilly and Black Mambas with fans paying just US$1 to watch.
However, Nduna who also wants all the league games involving Chegutu Pirates at the stadium to be free of charge, said the Northern Region misunderstood his point as the move was meant to encourage more people to attend the game.
“If you have got a porous stadium like we have and have passionate supporters like ours, you need to avoid some of these tricky situations,” said Nduna.
“Those people just want to watch football, they don’t care who is playing and we picked some loopholes.
“We need to think outside the box because if we are to get people paying we might get 100 people or we may have two people going through the gates and the rest go through those undesignated points. So what it means is we are creating a lot of unnecessary work for police. Is this what we want, for people to enter through undesignated areas?
“I am not setting a bad precedence, there are porous areas and because of those porous places we will have unrest.”
Nduna, who is involved with Chegutu Pirates as a sponsor, has also proposed the same condition for Pirates’ games at Pfupajena and said the decision was meant to mobilise support for a team that is fighting relegation. “We are trying to make them survive relegation. We are trying to say let the old, the young and everybody else come and support the team,” said Nduna.
“But for the (Prophet) Magaya thing we said let them bring raffle tickets. I said there are raffle tickets, bring in those and people will buy.
“This guy (Manyengavana) is not a football person, he doesn’t want to think outside the box. He always say the book says this, the book will kill the game. Let’s structure football in terms of what we have locally, let’s not be blinkered.
“We need to think outside the box seriously. This is a community team, I don’t own it. I make sure these guys are well remunerated, after they have served and after they have made people of Chegutu happy they can carry on. We are just trying to promote a lot of talent . . . philanthropist is the word.
“I don’t need to gain anything from that. I just want to make sure there is a win, win situation for Chegutu. If he (Manyengavana) knew what the people of Chegutu have been through he will see in the same light with us.
“I don’t think there is anything wrong in contributing in terms of sponsorship whether one is a local leader. Besides sponsoring football I also play that’s how passionate I am.”
Manyengavana, though, has emerged as one of, if not the best, football administrator to lead the Northern Region Division One leadership.
Under his leadership, the league has found sponsors for the first time in its history and now boasts of a league sponsor, a sponsor for the monthly and yearly top goalscorer awards and a sponsor for their eight-team tournament.
There are fears that if the regional leadership had allowed Nduna to override them, it could have set a bad precedent.
Another MP, in Harare or Bulawayo, would then just declare that Premiership matches in his constituency, Mbare or Barbourfields, would now be watched free of charge. Yesterday, a reader of the online edition of The Herald said politics and football were being mixed, in the Chegutu fallout, and this was always a recipe for controversy.
Both Flame Lilly and Mambas were also not happy to play a Cup game where fans would be allowed free entrance.
“According to the rules, we have to share the gate-takings but then if they say it’s for free I don’t know what they will be trying to mean,” Mambas secretary-general, Thomas Mangwiro, told our sister newspaper, H-Metro.
“I don’t know if it will be fair to play for free so if we are not getting anything it’s better for Zifa to reschedule the game.”
Online Reporter