adminPremiership debutants How Mine might be a small club, but they have announced their arrival in the big league in a big way. Not all teams have come into the Premiership and managed to steal maximum points on their first season from the country’s big two clubs — Highlanders and Dynamos, as How Mine have done.
When they defeated Highlanders 2-1 in their own back yard, many considered it a fluke but when they went on to beat Dynamos 1-0 in another league match last Saturday, it was not just another result. It was a result full of meaning, a result which left football pundits eating their own words of writing off the gold miners.
While the club could be regarded as small in stature when compared to other teams in the league, the arsenal in the club cannot be taken in the same vein, perhaps the saying “it’s not the size of the dog but the size of the fight in the dog that matters” aptly sums up the story of How Mine.
For starters, the leadership at How Mine sought to strengthen their technical department and went for someone who has gone through the mill.
Head coach Philani Mabhena is the kind of guy who if was a lawyer would have gone through his Articles. He is some kind of journeyman in his trade, having gone through the right apprenticeship under a number of seasoned coaches in and outside Zimbabwe.
After starting out coaching school boys, he moved to Highlanders juniors before jumping the border to Botswana where he worked for some time. He then came back home and was appointed by Madinda Ndlovu to be his assistant at Highlanders. Ndlovu left when the club was having difficulties in paying him, he remained behind and was briefly an assistant to Egyptian expatriate Mohamed Fathi. However, Mabhena could not strike the right chord with Fathi and was elbowed out and Mkhuphali Masuku was elevated to be assistant coach to Fathi and insiders said he was pushed out simply because he was not a “yes man”.
From Highlanders, he emerged at Chicken Inn as assistant to Philani Ncube when they guided the club to Premiership football. Mabhena was to come back to the Premiership limelight at FC Platinum as assistant coach to the late Benjanim Moyo, playing a crucial role as they built the empire that has made people of Zvishavane proud. But his stay there was not without incident. He was left acting head coach after Moyo’s death and after his bosses felt he was not giving them the results they wanted, he was replaced by second assistant Patrick Mandizha before Rahman Gumbo took over. While he was assistant to Gumbo, he was at some point suspended under unclear circumstances and then redeployed to the Under-19 team that is playing in the Zifa Division One Central Region until his contract expired at the end of last year.
At How Mine, he is working with another Philani,- “Beefy” Ncube, who was ironically his boss at Chicken Inn when they took the club to the Premiership from Division One. Ncube is now his assistant at How Mine where they are working with former AmaZulu goalkeeper Themba Dube as goalkeeper’s coach and other coaches who took the club to the Premiership from Division One. The two “Ps” seem to have struck a good working relationship that has steadily marked the territory for How Mine in the Premiership and any team facing them now knows what to expect.
Beefy is another seasoned coach who has seen it all at Chicken Inn, Zimbabwe Saints and the now defunct Njube Sundowns and is a former PSL coach of the year after guiding Sundowns to a fourth finish in the Premiership.
If you take a glance at the How Mine team sheet, you will also realise that Mabhena looked for players who would give him results. Players who would help him survive the chop and he has always remained realistic and modest about it.
“This is an important win for us and the Bulawayo soccer fans. This is going to calm a lot of our nerves in our camp. That period where we were not winning was a difficult time for me as a coach but we were expecting to get this result because we could tell their (Dynamos) strengths from when we played them and deployed fast wingers and it worked for us,” Mabhena was quoted as saying after the famous win over DeMbare.
Their victory over Dynamos had come after a bad patch, since they beat Bosso on 19 May.
Mabhena brought into How Mine veterans like Gilbert Banda, deemed no longer good enough by FC Platinum and Highlanders, Khumbulani Banda, one of the best left backs in the country, who was a victim of boardroom machinations at FC Platinum resulting in his loaning out to How Mine, Brighton Dube, a seasoned defender honed at Highlanders and FC Platinum, Herbert Dick, a veteran of many struggles, far too many to mention.
There is Ocean Mpofu, formerly with Hwange, Motor Action and Black Mambas, Menard Mupera, another veteran whose struggles are far too many to mention, Nqobile Mpala, a predatory striker who made his name at Highlanders before moving to South Africa and then to Caps United last year, Simon Njeleza, that former Hwange goal poacher whose career took a serious knock when he moved to FC Platinum where he did not see much game time due to injury and another fine striker Simba Sithole, who seems to be scoring goals for fun. There is also exciting young midfielder, Arnold Ndiweni, who was loaned out by Highlanders and seems to have taken the opportunity with both hands to show the world the kind of stuff he is made of. There are also a number of other players who are hungry for success at How Mine, and because they play as a unit with less pressure from their fans, they have taken every game as it comes and are slowly turning heads in town.
The result on Saturday was too hard to stomach even to Dynamos fans who turned violent after having a second defeat in as many league games, and the technical department blamed the referee for the defeat.
“We raised complaints with the fourth official but nothing was done and in fact the match officials threatened to send the coaches away from the bench…We do not complain when we lose because that is part of the game but we raise some questions when referees appear to be aiding another team to get a result. Our players were being fouled but nothing was being done most of the times,” said Dynamos manager Richard Chinhoro.
On the other hand, How Mine officials also complained that the referee added four minutes “which were unwarranted” and in fact, the match added in 96th minute, they said.
Mabhena is keen to strengthen his squad, after having said that he was looking for an experienced goalkeeper, a central defender, central attacking midfielder and two strikers. With the likes of Monomotapa captain Kuda Mushari and Motor Action goalkeeper Marlon Jani as well as nomadic goalkeeper Ephraim Mazarura linked to the club, they are set to be one of the strongest sides in the league on paper.
Dynamos now find themselves at the mercy of the PSL Disciplinary committee and are likely to be fined $8 000 for the violent behaviour of their fans who threw missiles into the pitch with defeat imminent. The trend was to follow on Sunday at Barbourfields stadium where Caps United fans threw missiles into the pitch and even invaded the pitch after the match.
The visiting Caps fans were not happy with the reversal of the penalty decision by the match officials and after the match, as if celebrating the four points they took from Highlanders this season, they had to audacity to scorn their rival fans singing “…maNdevere munowaperei doro…..” Oh my God. “LOL”, I’m sure everyone now understands what this stands for “Laughing Out Loud”, we are now living in the social media world by the way.
That said and done, the green machine also face a still penalty from the league for the rowdy behaviour of their fans.
There you have it; we have the P-Square of football belting nice tunes for How Mine in Philani Ncube and Philani Mabhena. In the music scene, P-Square are a Nigerian RnB duo composed of identical twin brothers Peter and Paul Okoye.
They produce and release their albums through Square Records. In December 2011, they were also signed to Akon’s Konvict Muzik label. They shot to fame with the song Chop my money, and are back with another scorcher—Personally. So P-Square dealt personally with Dynamos… personally with Highlanders and professionally…. (singing).
Bosso must learn from Platinum’s mistake
There were reports during the week that Highlanders coach Kelvin Kaindu had signed a pre-contract with FC Platinum to join them next season, with Lloyd Mutasa reverting to his earmarked role of development coach. It remains to be seen what will happen at the end of the year, although Highlanders have insisted that they are happy with the coach and would want to see him win the league title this season.
In fact, club chairman, Peter Dube was quoted on radio during the week saying they finished the first half of the season on top of the log and had chances of finishing the second half of the season at the top of the log and land the championship. He said reports that they were unhappy with Kaindu were being peddled in the social media by some people bent on causing confusion. Nonetheless, during the week, I had an off the cuff chat with an FC Platinum official on the issue and he told me Highlanders have to learn from the mistake they made last year when they relieved Rahman Gumbo of his duties.
“I don’t think it will be wise for Highlanders to let go of Kaindu at this stage, let alone at the end of the season. I can tell you we have not approached him because he is employed at Highlanders and we respect that, maybe when they fire him we can try something. But my point is Highlanders must learn from our mistake. Last year we fired Rahman when we were number two on the log during the half of the season and we ended up number seven. So if they (Highlanders) want to finish in the middle of the log, they can fire him now and see what will happen. It disturbs everything and everyone and players get disoriented when you make major changes during the season especially when you are still in contention for the title. When you are already out of the race, you can make changes and start preparing for the future there is no problem.” Wise words?
News reaching us last night was that Chicken Inn would ambush Highlanders with some new signings, with Clemence Matawu from Motor Action falling under spotlight.spotlight
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