This was vintage Highlanders, playing with a swagger that demonstrated their superiority

Last Saturday, Bosso eased the pain they had inflicted on their loyal fans and gave them reason to believe, that tomorrow will not necessarily be as dark as yesterday, after a stunning performance, dripping in quality, which blew away the challenge of giant-killers How Mine in the final of the Mbada Diamonds Cup at Barbourfields

WHEN the moment finally arrived, with Highlanders exorcising a ghost that had haunted them for a lengthy period, some of their fans at a packed Barbourfields simply didn’t know how to react – overwhelmed by the raw beauty of a grand occasion that meant so much for each of them.

For the seven-year-olds in that stadium, this was their first dance with a significant success story penned by their beloved team, its first victory in the two trophies that matter most – the flagship knockout football tournament or the league championship.

For others, this was the end of a nightmare, which had started in their moment of triumph in 2006 when Methembe Ndlovu delivered the championship, only for subsequent Classes of Bosso teams to fail to live up to the lofty heights scaled by the Mayor and his gallant royal warriors.

Those of little faith had begun to wonder whether they will ever see this beautiful day – their beloved team toasting its golden moment of success, their players soaking in the warmth of the standing ovation from fans eternally grateful for what they had put into their shift, all this happening in their fortress, their stadium, their home.

Their depression was compounded, in the years that their team went on a barren run, by the fact that their biggest rivals, Dynamos, won four league championships in those seven years, finished as runners-up three times and, until this year, had turned the Mbada Diamonds Cup into their personal property.

But last Saturday, Bosso eased the pain they had inflicted on their loyal fans and gave them reason to believe, that tomorrow will not necessarily be as dark as yesterday, after a stunning performance, dripping in quality, which blew away the challenge of giant-killers How Mine in the final of the Mbada Diamonds Cup at Barbourfields.

This was vintage Highlanders, playing with a swagger that demonstrated their superiority, with a commitment that was full value for the grand occasion and with a spirit that would have made the immortal Willard Mashinkila-Khumalo, sitting on the bench, proud that, at long last, the players on the pitch were worthy to be called Bosso troops.

When the game ended, to confirm Bosso as winners of the 2013 Mbada Diamonds Cup, there was a profound wave of relief that swept through the thousands of Highlanders fans who were there, in soul and in spirit, to be witnesses and cheerleaders of their team’s return to the winners’ enclosure.

In that tsunami of joy, some didn’t know what to do and hundreds, if not thousands, swept onto the field of play at Barbourfields, trying to share this golden moment with their heroes, revelling in the open spaces that the pitch provided for them to do their merry-making and, as we watched from the VIP Stand, all we could see was this one happy family.

To their credit, the police at Barbourfields exercised a lot of restraint, in this delicate balancing act of giving the fans the freedom to enjoy their priceless moment and then keeping the order needed for the formalities of the trophy presentation to go ahead without hitches, and where this stadium had represented nothing but mayhem, in the past, now it was a beautiful theatre of boundless joy.

Having suffered so much, in the past seven years, it felt good to see the Bosso family enjoying themselves and I felt privileged to be one of the witnesses of this beautiful moment, where Highlanders showed their sunny side, the infectious smiles of their fans overcome by delirium, the calculated but boundless joy of their coach who had won his breakthrough game and the ecstasy among their players who, at long last, had been richly rewarded for their efforts.

Why Some Of Our Rules Make No Sense
The explosion of joy, within the Bosso family once their team had secured the Mbada Diamond Cup, was spontaneous – a family toasting its moment in the sunshine after countless heartbreaks that had tortured their soul and shattered their spirits in seven years that had promised so much but, effectively, delivered very little.

Their invasion of the playing field, although wrong, was spontaneous and I remember talking to the Editor of the Chronicle, my good friend Mduduzi Mathuthu, in the VIP Enclosure at Barbourfields that Saturday, and presenting my argument that as much as I didn’t agree with fans spilling onto the pitch, we needed to be human enough to understand that there were some special occasions that needed special celebrations.

I told Mduduzi that when a people have suffered for seven years, seeing their biggest rivals take what used to be their place at the top of the country’s football tree, seeing them win one league championship after another, seeing them reach the semi-finals of the Champions League, seeing them dominate the knockout tournaments, when their time came for them to celebrate success, it was impossible to contain the emotions.

My argument to Mduduzi was that I would have had a serious problem with the Bosso fans if they abused their moment in the sunshine by turning themselves into a violent gang that would assault anybody they believed was supporting How Mine that day or stoning cars or buses they suspected carried the How Mine supporters.

Running onto the pitch, to celebrate on such a special day, I told Mduduzi, didn’t appear to me like a crime made in hell and while it was important for football to keep certain rules for the sake of order, it was also important that we don’t act like programmed traffic lights that will indicate green, when the time comes, even when that lane was long closed for incoming traffic.

The tragedy about what was happening on the pitch that day was that Bosso would be punished with an US$8 000 fine, that’s what our football leaders at the PSL pegged as a fine for pitch invasion by fans, and the fact that even the police, who have the better training and equipment to prevent such a crowd from spilling onto the pitch had been overwhelmed, would not be taken into account.

This week it was also revealed that Dynamos, the champions, will have to pay about US$57 000 in fines, most of them from pitch invasions when their fans stormed the field in celebrations when they won big matches or when they were confirmed as champions for the third straight year, with the Glamour Boys now set to take just about US$13 000 home from their earnings of US$70 000 for winning the championship.

I have to emphasise that I subscribe to the value of rules and regulations because, without them, our football will turn into a jungle that will not be manageable and if we don’t control pitch invasions, and make some people culpable for the madness that comes with supporters flooding football pitches, we would be inciting lawlessness and this beautiful game might prove difficult, if not impossible, to manage.
But I have a problem with a football system which, in its obsession to keep itself as a beacon of modernity, turns its back on issues that, if not given careful consideration, can devour the very clubs that are supposed to represent the foundation on which this Premier Soccer League establishment is supposed to be built.

It’s ridiculous, to say the least, that our football leaders, fully aware of the fact that our clubs earn peanuts and, for winning the championship stand to collect just US$70 000, can sit down and come up with such outrageous fines like US$8 000 on the home club on the occasion some fans lose their bearings, beat the police cordon, and storm onto the field of play in celebration.

Just to imagine that our football leaders can charge their clubs something that is more than a tenth of the net value of winning the championship package, which is US$70 000, just because a group of fans stormed onto the pitch in one game, defies logic, and appears to send the signal that they don’t care so much about the welfare of those clubs.

Yes, it’s important that law and order is maintained and that can only be done through a raft of rules and regulations that safeguard the game, with those who violate them, being punished accordingly so that others will be reminded that this is wrong and order will continue to prevail.

But whatever sanctions that our football leaders had to come up with, they needed to take into consideration the earnings of the clubs, the packages that are there to be won, and the fines had to be aligned with those earnings, and any village economist will tell you that there can’t be any justification in just one chunk of fine, for a single offence, chewing more than a tenth of the expected earnings of the top club.

When you have a situation where, in the event that a club’s fans storm the pitch in celebrations in 10 games, which brings the fine to US$80 000, that club will still run a US$10 000 debt with the PSL, even if it wins the championship, then you know the game has lost its soul.

Have we ever imagined, for instance, if that happened in games featuring Tripple B, who get US$5 000 for finishing last in the championship race, then it would have meant that the Beitbridge side would have sunk into Division One weighed down with US$75 000, in debts owed to the PSL, and nothing put into their bank to show for their campaign in the top-flight league.

That doesn’t sound right, does it, and if you can punish a team for the wave of joy that swept through Barbourfields on Saturday, without taking into consideration the mitigating factors that winning a major Cup for the first time in seven years, in their own stadium, would have inevitably provoked such an outpouring of happiness, leading some to lose their senses and run onto the pitch, then you would be making a mockery of leadership.

They say that when a revolution starts to devour its children, then that revolution has lost its relevance.
And, looking at the madness of the fines that the PSL have been lumping on their clubs, against the background of the peanuts that the clubs are generating whether or not they are champions, it sends this signal that, 20 years after Chris Sibanda and Morrison Sifelani started this organisation, maybe it has run its course.

What The Big Clubs Have Said
Kenny Mubaiwa, Dynamos chairman
“It’s a disaster for us. We were hoping the US$70 000 prize money would go a long way in assisting us but now almost the whole figure will be gobbled up by the fines. We are not saying pitch invasions are condoned BUT TO COME UP WITH A FINE OF US$8 000 FOR A LEAGUE THAT IS SPONSORED SO POORLY IS RATHER UNFAIR TO THE CLUBS. (If) we had an option we would have, without any hesitation, pulled out of the Caf Champions League campaign,” – Chronicle.

Joe Makuvire, CAPS United chief executive
“We don’t have the money to pay. Instead the PSL focusing on taking money from clubs, they should be focusing on educating fans. PSL priority should be on the survival of clubs and not making money out of the clubs. In the end the PSL is there to serve the clubs.” – Daily News

It’s Just Like The Fees For The Zifa Poll
The ridiculous fines that are being imposed on the PSL teams have a similar ringing tone to the outrageous fees that Zifa announced they have set for those who want to contest in the elections set to culminate in the polls for the association’s board in March next year.

To ask people to pay US$10 000, just to challenge for the Zifa presidency, in a country where a civil servant, who should be allowed to dream of one day occupying that post, earns around US$300, and where the average footballer, who should be allowed to dream of following into the footsteps of Kalusha Bwalya at retirement by taking over as boss of this country’s football family, earns around US$400 a month, defies logic.

When we begin to take football leadership, far away from those who play it, and we erect hurdles that will make it impossible for them to dream of one day taking over as leaders of this game, simply because of exorbitant fees, then we are doing this game a huge disservice.

History of our Zifa leadership will show that it’s a post that has, generally, been occupied by wealthy people – we are yet to get someone, a poor man from Chitungwiza, being elected Zifa chairman or president in this country since we became an Independent nation.

In the past 33 years, with all the wealthy people who have led us as the Zifa presidents, records will show that the majority of them haven’t really been angels, sent from heaven to deliver our game to the Promised Land, and given that background, I’m not so sure why those who pegged these exorbitant fees are trying to achieve.

If for the past 33 years, our football leaders have been the poor men from Mbare, Mufakose, Zengeza or Mabvuku, who came into the game pretending that they wanted to take it forward but ended up doing nothing but feasting on the little money that came into its coffers, one would have found justification in Zifa’s decision to say that we peg the participation fees at US$10 000.

With all due respect to the Zifa secretariat, who announced that they pegged these fees, they have the mandate to run the game but they certainly don’t own this game, they simply manage it on behalf of the people of this country and, as and when they do things that are way out of order, they need to be reminded and, if possible, brought into order.

Aisha Tsimba, the Sports Commission legal advisor, was spot on, during her presentation to the parliamentary portfolio on education, sport, arts and culture on Wednesday, when she said that whatever Zifa were recommending, it had to be in line with the laws of this country.

“It (the participation fees) has to apply to the laws of Zimbabwe and, as we speak right now, we are yet to endorse it,” she said.

Goodbye Madiba
Nelson Mandela’s iconic sporting moment came on a rugby field, in a rugby shirt, in the Rugby World Cup final, at Ellis Park 18 years ago when the Springboks somehow held their nerve and found a way to stop Jona Lomu to be crowned champions of the world.

Yes, there was that appearance at the Nations Cup finals, the following year, when he went onto the field, in a Bafana Bafana shirt and helped captain, Neil Tovey, lift the trophy but the absence of defending champions Nigeria, because of a diplomatic row with Pretoria, meant that something was eroded from that tournament.

Mandela’s last public appearance was on a football field, on a bitterly cold night in Johannesburg, when he appeared at Soccer City during the final of the 2010 World Cup, a tournament I was lucky enough to cover.

An amateur boxer during his youth, who was wooed to rugby because of the political significance of singing the same tune with the Springboks, Mandela provided the Midas Touch that helped South Africa win the right to host the 2010 World Cup.

On Thursday night, Madiba waved goodbye to our world of the living and plunged a globe into mourning and Fifa said he was “one of the greatest humanists”, Muhammad Ali said he was a “a man whose heart, soul and spirit could not be contained or restrained by racial and economic injustices,” and Pele said he “was one of the most influential people in my life.”

Goodbye Madiba.

To God Be The Glory!
Come on United!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Chicharitoooooooooooooooooooooo!

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