ZRU need to search their soul

Paul Munyuki Sports Reporter
THE Zimbabwe rugby side is expected back home today after a sad end to yet another World Cup campaign that saw their dream suffer a huge blow at the hands of Russia over the weekend. The Sables will travel halfway round the world, in their journey home, connecting from the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk to Moscow (Russia), Paris (France), Johannesburg (South Africa) and finally Harare.
Such journey can only be fun when you know that you have accomplished your mission.

The Zimbabwe Rugby Union will have to do a lot of soul-searching and map the way forward upon returning to the capital.
ZRU’s vice presidents Colleen de Jong and Nyararai Sibanda travelled with the side that included the technical staff of director of rugby Liam Middleton, coach Brendan Dawson, assistant Cyprian “Supa” Mandenge, team manager Brighton Chivandire and physiotherapist Sharon Mkumbudzi.

But only Sibanda and de Jong will still be in office when they touch down today as the Sables technical contracts were such that they would run only up to the end of their World Cup qualifiers and now that they have lost the challenge, they have also lost their jobs.

It is now up to the ZRU board to map the way forward and, hopefully, they have learnt a lot of lessons from the previous World Cup campaign marred by a number of flaws.

Going forward, decision-making within the ZRU should be clear and each member of the union should stick to their responsibilities because there has been some fights in the technical posts following the coming in of Middleton.

The good thing about the current Sables squad is there that there are a lot of young, talented and highly skillful players like Tafadzwa Chitokwindo, Daniel Robertson, Kevin Nqindi, Graeme Lawler, Hilton Mudariki, Shayne Makombe, Stephan Hunduza and Lenience Tambwera.

Other players like Charles Jiji, Tatenda Karuru, Ray de Jong, Tich Makwanya and Brian Makamure were not drafted this time but will form the core of the squad going forward.

It would have been better had the ZRU tried to work with the Sables Class of 2012 that won the Africa Cup but, unfortunately, some players fell out of favour with the coaches while some felt they were getting a raw deal and walked away.