Wild Boys fight for survival

, refreshingly, they haven’t been doing it with any big names in their technical set-up.
Tonderai Marume, the head coach, has – until now – spent most of his time in the Premiership as part of the backroom staff at CAPS United and a number of other football clubs.
But it has been the arrival of assistant coach, Jackson Gift Munyaka, in mid-season, which has been a catalyst to the good run that has seen the Wild Boys rise from the bottom of the Premiership table.
Interestingly, the 46-year-old Munyaka, is an electrical engineer, who runs his own company in the capital, but has found the lure of his football passion too much to resist, leading him to spend endless hours on the training field.
A holder of a purple belt in karate (shukokai) and a Level 3 coaching certificate, Munyaka has come a long way from being the player/coach who was the heartbeat of Beatrice FC, taking then from Division Four to Division Two in three years between 1994 and 1996.
The following year he became the player/coach for Zesa Harare, then a Division Two club, and then coached Zesa Norton between 1999 and 2001 before returning to coach Zesa Harare again.
From 2003 to 2007, Munyaka was one of the coaches tasked with handling the junior teams at Dynamos and, at the end of that year, he left the game to pursue his business interests.
But, four years down the line, Munyaka is back in the battlefields of the country’s Premiership and has chosen Shooting Stars as his entry point back into the game that has always been his passion.
“For some time now, I have been watching from a distance, but I saw what my brother Joe (Sengeredo) was doing, what he has put into the team and the challenges they were facing, and felt that it would be unfair to let the project collapse,” said Munyaka.
“So I came back to try and help them and I had the experience because every team that I coached in the past was promoted every year, which showed we were doing something good.
“When I joined Beatrice FC, as a player/coach, the team had been in Division Four for five years and I had them promoted every year until I left when they were in Division Two.
“I personally formed Zesa Norton and we joined the area zones and won all games, including the Zesa annual sports festival on our maiden appearance, beating teams that were in the top divisions like Zesa Hwange, Zesa Kariba and Zesa Harare.”
Munyaka has worked with a number of players, in his coaching career, and revealed that he derived a lot of joy from coaching former CAPS United midfielder Wonder Ngoko, former Zimbabwe international wingback Alois Yohane and striker Newton Katanha.
“Our mission right now is to try and avoid relegation we are working well, so far, as a team to achieve that goal,” said Munyaka.
“Obviously it’s not an easy task and the games will get tougher and tougher but that’s what the Premier League is all about and I am happy just to be playing my small part.
“We have had some good results but we need to continue working hard and this Sunday we have a big game against Gunners and if we can get a positive result, then we will remain on the right track.”
Wild Boys’ chairman Lewis Matindife said Munyaka has not only brought his technical skills, which have helped the team, but he has also helped them with some of the running costs associated with keeping the club afloat.
“It’s not easy keeping a club in the Premier League and it has been a tough battle for us just to get to where we are right now in the season,” said Matindife.
“The advantage of having Jackson in our team is that he doesn’t only bring the technical experience on the bench but he has also helped us with the operational costs involved.
“He is a passionate man who wants to succeed in everything that he does and he feels he has some unfinished business in football and that is why he came back.
“We are confident of winning our fight against relegation, which is a very complicated one because it involves more than half the teams in the league, and we have a feeling that, after our poor run, we are on the right track to do it.”
The Wild Boys’ next home match, after tomorrow’s away tie against Gunners, is at home to Dynamos.