Zim players at Bushbury Hill

Collin Matiza Sports Editor
EVER heard of the Mudiyi brothers — Alistair and Caleb — and another footballer named Tatenda Anthony?

Well, they are three of four Zimbabwean players on the books of an ambitious English Sunday league outfit Bushbury Hill Football Club based in Wolverhampton.

Bushbury lies two miles north-east of Wolverhampton city centre, divided between the Bushbury North and Bushbury South and Low Hill wards.

Today, Bushbury has no pubs and has one football club — Bushbury Hill Football Club — whose first team manager is Scott Queeney.

He has outlined big plans for his Sunday league side, which also features some African players — four Zimbabweans and a number of promising footballers from Sudan and Somalia.

Alistair Mudiyi is an 18-year-old central midfielder while his brother Caleb (20) is a left winger.

Their fellow Zimbabwean, Anthony, is a 20-year-old central midfielder.

And they are all part of Queeney’s five-year project which he hopes will see newly-formed Bushbury Hill making strides towards becoming a professional side in England.

“I came across Bushbury Hill, as I was studying at the University of Wolverhampton, and joined the team through an ex-manager of my previous team who had been the coach for Bushbury Hill,’’ said Alistair, who moved to the UK from Zimbabwe at age of eight.

“My ex-manager then introduced me to Bushbury’s manager and I went down to check it out and showed the manager what I have got and he was pleased with my performance as he told me he wanted to sign me and ever since I have been developing as a player and, most importantly, a team player.”

Caleb said he was “influenced” to join Bushbury Hill by his sibling.

“I ended up playing for Bushbury because Alistair told me to tag along with some friends. I’ve been always playing for Dudley, along with other teams, trying to play in higher league of non-league,” Caleb said.

And now the Mudiyi brothers, who grew up in Borrowdale in Harare, have taken their first steps of becoming fully-fledged professional players.

According to the local Express & Star newspaper, Bushbury Hill Football Club started life last September in preparation for the subsequent campaign and Queeney has outlined big plans for his side.

The club will initially join the Beacon League.

“It’s about giving Bushbury, and the area, a football team,” he told Express & Star. “We want to give people a team that they can get behind and follow.

“We don’t want to just settle for a Sunday league team, we want to become an established non-league side.

“We have a five-year project. Our goal is to get to non-league. We aim to get a squad together, strong enough to make that transition.”

As for the squad, training only began at the turn of the year but even in that short period, Queeney has already grouped together an exciting pool of players.

“We’ve been lucky,” he said. “We only first kicked a ball in January, but we’ve had over 50 players join us already.

“The core is made up of those who I have coached in the past. But players are welcome to join as long as they have the right attitude.

“We have people from all different backgrounds. There is a big range of players, we have four from Zimbabwe, lads from Sudan and Somalia.

“Nobody is treated differently. There are no egos, the team have bonded really well.

“After a couple of times advertising, we had players coming to us saying, I have heard good things about your club, I’d love to be a part of it.”

As with teams across the UK, the coronavirus pandemic has halted Bushbury’s progress, but Queeney sees it as only a minor disruption on the way to assembling a strong team.

“Before everything was put on hold we had only played twice. But we had friendlies lined up all over the country, even one with a team in London, and we trained three times a week,” he said.

“The lads are still talking, you can tell they’re missing football, but everyone understands that coronavirus is the bigger picture.

“We will be ready as soon as we get the all clear to play again. We will come back and continue from where we left off.”