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THE Zimbabwe Warriors have a golden chance to complete their Nations Cup qualifying campaign unbeaten, by avoiding defeat in Guinea, which will be a fitting conclusion to an adventure in which our senior national football team have distinguished themselves after a decade of poor results on the continent.Coach Callisto Pasuwa and his troops just need either a draw, or a victory, in Guinea to ensure that they don’t only complete their campaign unbeaten, but they underline their growing status as one of the emerging forces on the continent.

After a decade in which our Warriors misfired terribly on the continent, we now have a side that we can proudly call our national football team, a group of men who have defied the odds, as we always expect from Zimbabweans given our never-say-die spirit, to book their place at the Nations Cup finals in Gabon next year.

From being rank outsiders, when the draw for the qualifiers were made, ranked 37th and cast away in Pot Three which contained the lightweights of African football, our boys have turned it around in style, stamping their authority in their group from day one when they beat Malawi in Blantyre.

They have even been more impressive, in their last two matches, thrashing Swaziland 4-0 and Malawi 3-0, scoring seven goals and conceding none and along the way playing some impressive football which has re-established the special bond that exists between them and the fans who have always stood in their corner.

We generate a lot of pride, as a nation, that we are the only Southern African country, so far, who have qualified for the 2017 Nations Cup finals and, when the curtain comes down on the qualifiers tomorrow, we are likely to be the only country from this region to have booked a ticket to Gabon.

When one considers that South Africa and Zambia, who have always considered themselves the big brothers of football in Southern Africa, have failed to qualify for Gabon and given that these two countries are our eternal rivals, our qualification has assumed added significance and we have a right to walk tall.

Khama Billiat and Knowledge Musona’s stock has risen during the qualifiers, with the attacking duo leading from the front, while skipper Willard Katsande has provided the spine in midfield and tough centreback Costa Nhamoinesu has been uncompromising.

Sadly, while this weekend should have been reserved for the party that should follow our completion of the task of qualifying for Gabon, the organisational challenges that stalk our national game, which have played a big part in crippling it so that it doesn’t reach its full potential in the past, have been very evident this week.

By late yesterday, the Warriors were still stranded in Harare, when they should have been in Guinea by now preparing for the big match, because Zifa did not have the money to underwrite their trip and, when a corporate partner was found to pay for the tickets, NetOne, it was at the very last minute.

As we report elsewhere in this newspaper, Zifa officials were battling to get connecting flights for the Warriors from either Addis Ababa in Ethiopia or Nairobi in Kenya, to enable the team to arrive in Conakry, Guinea, in time for tomorrow’s match.

There were even attempts by our football leaders to ask the Confederation of African Football to postpone tomorrow’s match to Monday, but given that the CAF offices are closed on Fridays, that was proving a difficult task — as of yesterday — leaving everything hanging in the balance.

CAF are very strict, when it comes to punishing teams that don’t fulfil their commitments and it is our hope that, somehow, something will be worked out and the Warriors will arrive in Conakry, in time for tomorrow’s match.

But even if they did, it’s not the best way to organise such an important national assignment and while we acknowledge that Zifa are broke, and don’t have the financial resources to pay for such a lengthy trip, we believe that our football leaders also slept on duty only to wake up at the last minute when they realised they were now facing a crisis.

Arrangements for the Guinea trip should have started in June, just after we played our match against Malawi where we secured our ticket to Gabon and if that had happened, we wouldn’t be in the kind of mess that we find ourselves in right now.

Instead, our football leaders were sucked into those boardroom battles that erupted after the dissolution of Zifa, and the creation of the short-lived National Football Association of Zimbabwe and the Warriors, and the importance of planning for the Guinea trip, were forgotten in that battle for the control of the domestic game’s leadership.

Because of the chaos that erupted, the Warriors did not enjoy the corporate appeal that their success would, ordinarily, have generated as companies kept their distance from the madness that was devouring domestic football with the boardroom battles fiercely raging on.

We certainly can do better, as a nation and the players and their coaches have done their part and we should complement them.