THEY invaded the Midlands capital like an army of Vikings, in the year Iceland flexed its football muscles with a spectacular show of both force and vociferous support for a club that had seemingly perfected the art of breaking their hearts. And two weeks after that colourful football carnival, residents of Gweru, still talking about the spectacular sights and the incredible sounds, which became — for one unforgettable day — the face of their city as the incredible and impressive power of football paraded its beauty in full bloom.

Not since a blue-and-white army had arrived in the same city and for a similar cause — for their coronation as champions at the same stadium four years ago — had Gweru seen such sights, and heard such sounds from an invading battalion of domestic football’s aristocracy.

And as cruel fate would somehow script it, a city which this year represented the ultimate tragedy for Dynamos, with eight of their fans perishing in an accident on their way to a league match at Ascot, would in December transform itself into a theatre of grand celebrations for CAPS United.

For more than a decade, the majority of these CAPS United fans had waited, their patience being stretched to the limit by the failings of a club that frustratingly kept punching below its considerable weight, transforming its fans into objects of ridicule. Especially for the fans of their biggest rivals, Dynamos, a club whose dominance of the domestic championship was ruthless.

At times they appeared a clone of Manchester United during Sir Alex Ferguson’s golden era, with Callisto Pasuwa guiding them to four on the trot.

David Mandigora also chipped in with a title in 2007 and a CAF Champions League semi-final place the following year, to provide the spice.

But with DeMbare enduring their worst season in the championship race this year, their potency immobilised by a disastrous flirtation with a Portuguese joker disguised as a football coach, with his surname the only closest thing the Glamour Boys got in him providing the silver lining which the giants had hoped for, the spoils of success for Makepekepe tasted even sweeter.

And Ascot, the scene of the Green Machine meltdown last season, which provoked a defining change in the club’s coaching staff with legend Lloyd Chitembwe being recalled from a prolonged stint in the wilderness, where he even ended flirting with an obscure Division One club that almost soiled his reputation, fittingly provided the stage for CAPS United’s overdue coronation as champions.

A 1-2 defeat to Chapungu at Ascot on August 29 last year, coming on the back of a single win in six matches — a 1-0 victory over Flame Lily, a 0-1 defeat at Harare City and three draws against Chicken Inn (0-0); Tsholotsho (1-1); and Dongo Sawmill (0-0), with the last two draws coming at the National Sports Stadium — finally provided the persuasion for the club’s leadership for changes in their coaching staff with Chitembwe returning as head coach.

Such was the spectacular transformation which they underwent under Chitembwe’s surgical brilliance since their last visit to Ascot.

They had lost only four of their 38 league matches when they arrived for their defining showdown against Chapungu that Saturday, with their fate for a ticket on football’s glory fields firmly in their hands.

However, with a point at Ascot not enough to guarantee success, what with a rampaging FC Platinum heavily favoured to beat Tsholotsho, which they did without raising a sweat in a 3-0 roll, CAPS United needed nerves of steel on an afternoon when the burden of expectations would test their character to the very end.

And the ghosts of their 1-2 loss there last year, and a 0-3 hammering in 2014 would weigh down heavily on the players.

Even when Simba Nhivi gave them an early lead, it was difficult to calm the nerves, for statistics provided grim reading for the CAPS United family as they showed that Chapungu usually score at home and, this season, no club had left Ascot with a clean sheet in the entire first half of the league campaign.

It wasn’t until Round 19, when ZPC Kariba came to Gweru and won 1-0, that Chapungu finally failed to score at home in the league this year, and that only three other clubs — Bulawayo City, Highlanders and FC Platinum — subsequently found a way to stop the airmen from scoring in their backyard, provided evidence, if CAPS United needed it, of the tough examination that was in store for them.

But if these fans needed a team with an indomitable spirit, one that could weather a hurricane, one that could be banked upon to withstand the heat even in this treacherous airfield, then this was the perfect group of players.

A group of individuals, certainly short on the kind of raw individual talents that had inspired the Classes of ’79, ’96, 2004 and 2005 to the Promised Land, but certainly long on both ambition and crucially, a never-say-die attitude which had made them unbeatable at home in the league all season, and elsewhere outside Bulawayo in the whole campaign.

A SUCCESS STORY WRITTEN IN THE STARS IN A YEAR OF SUCH REMARKABLE TALES
And when it was all over at Ascot two weeks ago, the mission having been completed in style and in rain by a team whose defensive solidity had given nothing away in three tough final games, all won by 1-0 margins, the party exploded in Gweru with the invading army celebrating their return to the top with song and dance, which provided the Midlands capital with its own version of a Green Machine carnival.

Of course, minus the virtually naked Brazilian samba girls, who come with the package that includes seductive dances and flashy smiles to light up even a gloomy winter evening, on the occasions when this carnival is held in the capital.

In a year that has provided us with a lot of fascinating tales of underdogs like Leicester City challenging the established order to become the most unlikely of English Premiership champions, the Chicago Cubs ending 108 years of waiting to win baseball’s World Series and a host of other lightweights, like Wales and Iceland at Euro 2016, it would only have been fitting that FC Platinum win the domestic championship.

Fitting for Norman Mapeza and his men to finally exorcise the ghost that has stalked clubs from outside Harare and Bulawayo for exactly half a century in which their quest for the league championship has borne no fruit and that this was the 50th anniversary of the year the immortals of St Paul’s Musami achieved that feat in 1966, it would only have been proper for FC Platinum to win.

But as I warned on this blog last week, a team that thrashes Highlanders in Week 29 of the season the way FC Platinum did this year with a 3-0 victory, and the way Harare City did three years ago with a thumping 4-0 victory, usually doesn’t end up as winners of the domestic Premiership title.

Even when my colleagues on ZTV’s Monday night authoritative football magazine programme, “Game Plan”, the legendary Charles “CNN” Mabika and Wellington Mpandare called it in FC Platinum’s favour, in the week leading to the final round of matches, I told them this was a race that would end with CAPS United celebrating despite their last two visits to Ascot having provided the hosts with a 5-1 aggregate victory.

And as it came to pass on that Saturday, some regular viewers of that television programme and readers of the blog started sending me messages across all platforms suggesting — once again — that I was a prophet, something I have repeatedly said I’m not, once again reminding that I’m just a mere journalist and the man who is a prophet is my good brother Walter Magaya.

Chitembwe, a deeply religious man, told me his team’s success was something written in the stars, something our good Lord provided for Green Machine family to help them heal the emotional wounds of more than 10 years of failure, and when one looks back at the just-ended season and all that happened, it’s difficult not to agree with Lodza.

For how does one explain that stunning comeback from the dead, three goals down with just five minutes left in regulation time and three more minutes of time added on against their biggest rivals and, somehow, they find the strength to rise from the canvas and not only score three goals but even get a golden chance to win that match?

How does one explain that show of character by these players refusing to be deflated by How Mine, completing a comeback from two goals down at the giant stadium, with the miners’ second goal coming on the stroke of full-time, and somehow finding the energy to go to the other end and, with the last touch of the game, score the winner through Dominic Chungwa?

How does one explain that excellent performance in Hwange, which certainly deserved three instead of the one point they picked, after they had travelled to the Colliery on an overnight trip following in-house issues in the camp, arriving there just in time for the start of the game and somehow emerging as the better team when many would have been betrayed by the battering the long journey had taken on their bodies?

Yes, Lodza, it was written in the stars and my pastor says it again and again that when God opens a door, no man can shut it and it’s clearly said, loud and clear, in Revelations 3:8 “I KNOW THY WORKS. BEHOLD, I HAVE SET BEFORE THEE AN OPEN DOOR, AND NO MAN CAN SHUT IT. FOR THOU HAST A LITTLE STRENGTH, AND HAS KEPT MY WORD, AND HAST NOT DENIED MY NAME.”

TWENTY YEARS LATER, THE DEFINING GAME CAME AGAINST THE OLD ENEMY

I was one of the privileged witnesses of that compelling drama at Rufaro, 20 years ago, when Mphumelelo Dzowa drove home an unstoppable bullet from a free-kick late in the game of a defining match for the CAPS United season, to hand the Green Machine a priceless point against Dynamos that provided a knockout blow to their biggest rivals in what was a gruelling contest for the league championship.

If DeMbare had won that day, which their industry and superb organisation on the afternoon probably deserved, the outcome of the championship race could probably have turned out differently, given doubts would have started to creep into that CAPS United side, weighed down by 17 years of failure, with the Glamour Boys having blown wind into their sails.

I have always maintained that fine collection of Glamour Boys would have won the CAF Champions League the previous year had they not self-destructed at home with a fatal coaching boob that sidelined Moses Chunga to the bench in the second leg of their quarter-final tie against Express of Uganda — has been forgotten and hardly features when people speak about some of the finest ever assembled sides on the domestic front.

But I have fought hard to ensure their memory isn’t forgotten because they were a very special team, better than the Orlando Pirates side that won the ’95 CAF Champions League, and it’s sad their campaign was crippled by a fatal decision to relegate Bambo, the hero of their 1-0 win in the first leg in Uganda, to the bench in the second leg in Harare.

Without Chunga’s influence, that DeMbare side lacked a cutting edge in midfield and Express took full advantage, scoring in the first half to wipe out that deficit, and when Bambo was thrown in at the start of the second half, he reminded his coaches what they had missed in the first 45 minutes, with his first touch producing a goal for the archives — taking the ball on his chest and volleying it into the top corner from a distance for the equaliser.

At that moment, Dynamos were going through to the semi-finals.

But Express scored again and although Chunga crafted a number of very good chances for Vitalis Takawira and Tauya Murewa, looking for the one goal that would have tied the contest in Harare and taken Dynamos into the semi-finals on a 3-2 aggregate, the young forwards failed to convert in that cauldron of pressure.

The following year, in ’96, that DeMbare side were the only club good enough to beat Nigerian powerhouse Shooting Stars, by a two-goal margin, in that season’s CAF Champions League campaign, with Dynamos winning 3-1 in Harare, a match which they could even have won by a rugby scoreline had Stars’ goalkeeper Abiodun Baruwa not produced a man-of-the-match performance in a losing cause.

That Shooting Stars team eliminated Pirates, Algerian giants JS Kabylie before losing the final in a penalty shootout to Zamalek of Egypt.

Back home, DeMbare were beaten to the league title by a very, very good CAPS United side — which some say was the best Green Machine of all-time — by just three points.

Sadly, very few care to remember that had that vintage DeMbare side won the Harare Derby in Round 23, if Mphumelelo’s late screamer hadn’t rescued a point for Makepekepe, things could have turned out differently in a championship race that, at the end, saw the two giants being separated by just three points — having won the same number of games (25), drawn the same number of games (5), with the difference coming in the games which they lost with CAPS losing just three and Dynamos four.

But, it’s something that isn’t said a lot in our game, that Dynamos side outscored a CAPS United side that had Stewart Murisa, the best player that season, Alois Bunjira, who also did enough to lay claim to the best player of the year award, Morgan Nkathazo, Farai Mbidzo and Joe Mugabe.

That DeMbare side scored 79 goals while Makepekepe scored 75 and while the Glamour Boys conceded 25 goals compared to the 26 which the Green Machine conceded that season.

And exactly 20 years after Mphumelelo’s late screamer in the Harare Derby provided a defining championship-winning moment, with the pendulum swinging towards Makepekepe after they inflicted a knockout blow on their closest rivals, history virtually repeated itself this year when CAPS United stormed back from that 0-3 defeat, with just five minutes of regulation time left, to tie the game.

It’s probably the finest comeback, in the history of the Harare Derby, an iconic contest which turns 40 next year, and Chitembwe concedes the deflation his men could have suffered, had they been embarrassed in their backyard by their biggest rivals with just few games left in the campaign, would have had serious repercussions in their quest for glory.

It’s too bad, isn’t it, we didn’t see a lot of that from DeMbare all season and, hopefully, the Green Machine’s success will not only pile the pressure on them, now that their fans are at the receiving end of the sickening jokes, but will also inspire them to rise again because, when they compete in the championship race, it enriches the marathon.

TO GOD BE THE GLORY!

Come on Warriors!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Khamaldinoooooooooooooooooo!

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Chat with me on Facebook, follow me on Twitter @Chakariboy, interact with me on Viber or read my material in The Southern Times or on www.sportszone.co.zw. The authoritative ZBC weekly television football magazine programme, Game Plan, is back on air and you can interact with me and the legendary Charles “CNN” Mabika every Monday evening.

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