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Ellina Mhlanga Sports Reporter
AFTER Harare and Bulawayo held their Arenel Nash Under-17 football tournament provincial finals last month, the remaining eight provinces will this week stage their competition at various venues throughout the country.

The national finals will be held from July 31 to August 2 at Prince Edward School in Harare with 12 schools taking part, including the 10 provinces representatives, defending champions and the hosting school.

Marlborough High and Mzilikazi were the winners for Harare and Bulawayo in the provincial finals held late last month.

They join defending champions Mavhuradonha from Mashonaland Central and the hosting school Prince Edward.

Tournament director, Mwandibhuya Mutepfa, confirmed that all remaining provincial finals will be on this Friday.

“Right now we have got eight provinces left to have their provincial finals — Manicaland, Mashonaland Central, Mashonaland West, Mashonaland East, Masvingo, Midlands, Matabeleland North and Matabeleland South.

“The eight provinces will have their finals this Friday, the 10th. We will be having 12 teams for the national finals — 10 provincial finalists, defending champions and the host.

“So far, four schools have already qualified — the defending champions, Mzilikazi and Marlborough High for Bulawayo and Harare and Prince Edward by the virtue of being the hosts,” said Mutepfa.

Mutepfa said they were happy with the way the tournament is progressing but noted that there have been some incidents where teams fail to provide the required documents for their players.

“So far so good, we have had some problems here and there. It’s quite worrisome like in Bulawayo, we had schools with no necessary documents which participated at zonal and district level.

“We don’t even expect to have such incidents in all provinces when they went through the zonals and the districts (competition).

“This is caused by officials who are not honest, they have the regulations they received before the tournament started that they should have a long birth certificate and national ID but still they come without those.

“Another note is sheer negligence by school officials, they don’t inform their players like in boarding schools to say bring your long birth certificate and ID when they (players) come like for the second term.

“The games I have watched so far the quality of play is high. I have been to Bulawayo and Mashonaland East, their level of competition is high,” said Mutepfa.

Arenel came on board to sponsor the Under-17 tournament early this year and they unveiled a sponsorship package of $152 000 for this year.