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Rodreck Mutuma

Takudzwa Chitsiga Sports Reporter
CAPS United prodigal sons — Rodreck Mutuma, Stephen Makatuka and Dominic Mukandi — returned to the team they quit in a huff a few weeks ago as they reported for duty yesterday.

The trio left the Green Machine after the club was plagued by serious financial challenges.

But since businessman Farai Jere completed his takeover of the club on Saturday, things have been returning to normal at the Harare giants.

The players and technical staff were paid their monthly salaries for May on Tuesday while they also got their winning bonuses for the victory over Dongo Sawmill.

Coach Mark Harrison has also been given a company car and will move from his lodgings in Borrowdale to a company house in Mandara.

Mutuma was the first player to leave, frustrated by the club’s failure to honour its obligations to him, and he was later followed by Mukandi and Makatuka.

The lanky striker did not train with his teammates yesterday with coach Harrison intent on finding a way of resolving the issue without disrupting morale among the players who remained behind to soldier on despite the challenges.

Harrison is aware of the challenges that the returning trio present, in terms of team building, amid concern among some of the club’s fans that they are mercenaries. Mutuma, who crossed floor to CAPS United from Dynamos at the beginning of this season, said he was happy to be back at the Green Machine and said the differences he had with the club had been resolved.

“I am now back and I am happy . . . We should just forget what happened and move on. It is part of life and we should just move on and I am grateful to all those who supported me during the trying times,” said the self-style Prince.

“I was down and out but my wife Paida Ncube stood by me during these trying times and I would like to thank her.

“The supporters, I believe, they understood my situation, it is not that I am not committed, but it happens, especially with pressure.

“I think I am now up again and ready to face new challenges.”

Jere, the new CAPS United president, insisted the Mutuma case should be resolved as quickly as possible with the club needing to also acknowledge that it was also responsible for the dramatic fallout with the forward.

The Harare businessman told his new management team that the club had a responsibility to take care of the affairs of their players.

He said while he could not interfere in what was purely an issue that should be handled by the technical staff, it was important for CAPS United to concede it had also come short in fulfilling its part of the bargain in the deal.

The Green Machine stepped into a new era at the weekend with Jere becoming the majority shareholder in the club after increasing his stake, in the shareholding of the team, to 80 percent. Twine Phiri, who until the weekend was the majority shareholder in the club, now has a reduced 20 percent in the franchise.

Harare lawyer Lewis Uriri was this week named to lead a new board of directors.