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THE Warriors plunge into the 2017 Cosafa Castle Cup final tomorrow against bitter rivals Zambia as favourites for a victory that will go a long way towards erasing the scars inflicted by eight years of largely lifeless performances at this regional football tournament.

Of course, there was that odd appearance in the final against the same opponents in Ndola in 2014 which our boys lost but, by and large, it has been an eight-year adventure we would rather forget.

Given that we are the most successful nation in this tournament with four wins, along with Zambia and South Africa, our indifferent showing in the past eight years has been an insult to our pedigree as one of Southern Africa’s most powerful football nations.

Because of that we have suffered the humiliation of being relegated to the group stages, where the lightweights battle it out to try and meet the heavyweights, who only join the battles at the quarter-final stage.

Refreshingly, the Class of 2017, under the guidance of a coach yet to lose a Cosafa Castle Cup match, Sunday Chidzambwa, have been on a mission to correct those wrongs and, so far, they have done pretty well by making it into the final.

They haven’t only earned their right to play for the gold medal but they have done that playing a refreshing big brand of attacking football that has charmed the entire region and mined them an avalanche of goals.

Some critics questioned the need for us to try and go all out for gold, arguing that this tournament would have served our football better if we had sent in the Young Warriors, for them to use it as part of their develop- ment.

But, given where we are coming from, with the Warriors enduring a 10-year failure to return to the Nations Cup finals and repeated failure in the Cosafa Castle Cup, it was important that we go with guns blazing at this regional tournament.

It’s crucial right now for us to breed a culture of winning, no matter which tournament we are playing, because that brings with it the level of responsibility that everyone who wears our national jersey should get.

Against that background, we wish our boys all the best tomorrow and we have also been charmed by the patriotism we have seen from the passionate fans who have been cheering the Warriors in South Africa.

There is no doubt our boys have been the most supported team at this tournament, drawing noisy crowds of Zimbabweans who have provided it with its enduring sights and sounds.

These fans deserve to be thanked for their loyalty with the trophy and we have the confidence that tomorrow our boys will deliver.

Of course, that shouldn’t blind us from the unfairness of a tournament where a team like ours has to play six games to try and win the tournament while a team like Zambia has the luxury of just playing half those games to do that.

We agree with Zifa and Cosafa president Philip Chiyangwa that the playing field at this tournament had to be levelled with changes made to its format so that every country had a fair chance to win it.

In fact, why punish the so-called lightweights like Seychelles and the Comoros, who probably need a helping hand to develop their football, while giving the heavyweights all the advantages of emerging as cham- pions?

The good thing is that at CAF, just like at Cosafa, there are some new brooms that are trying to change the flawed way things were done in the past and they have our support.

For now, we can only say “Go Warriors Go”.