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Eddie Chikamhi Senior Sports Reporter
ALTHOUGH Dynamos enjoyed their homecoming show at Rufaro with a win over Triangle, the crowd that thronged the stadium on Sunday felt short-changed by the Harare City Council’s efforts in renovating the facility.

The stadium reopened its doors to Premiership football on Saturday after five months when Harare City hosted CAPS United, with Dynamos and Triangle coming in 24 hours later.

Rufaro was closed at the beginning of the season for renovations after teams had complained of the bad state of the artificial turf.

The synthetic turf lacked maintenance since it was laid 10 years ago courtesy of FIFA and had become a hazard to players.

The authorities have replaced the worn-out artificial turf with natural grass.

The football fraternity, however, had raised expectations on the work that was taking place at Rufaro.

But many were disappointed that nothing has changed except a turf that is unlikely to last the distance.

The authorities basically emphasised on the playing surface and appear to have made a mess of it, ignoring the other areas like the stands, the walls that are crying for a make-over, the entrances and the exterior car park, which could also be a good source of income for council if managed well.

There is still a lot of dirty patches at some key areas of the stadium, especially the VIP entrances, where visitors are greeted by stench and overgrown grass which has provided vagrants and passers-by with a makeshift toilet.

It would be interesting for the Harare City Council to publish how much they spent on the renovations.

But away from the glaring shortcomings, Dynamos were elated to be back to their home ground.

The Harare giants had shared the National Sports Stadium with rivals CAPS United for the entire first half of the season.

They had a good crowd on their return to the place they call home.

Rufaro has always been the venue of choice to the DeMbare fans because of its centrality.

DeMbare coach Lloyd Mutasa praised the authorities for replacing the ageing and worn out turf which had caused injuries to many players.

“I would want to believe that here and there you could hear a lot of players complaining about the hard pitch on the artificial turf. Probably reverting to the natural grass is good for the youngsters,” said Mutasa.

Skipper Ocean Mushure had a starring role by creating the opener for Tawanda Macheke and then banging in the winner.

Mutasa said Mushure, who prospered as an attacking player recently at the COSAFA tournament, is likely to become a permanent feature upfront for DeMbare.

“I think we said it before that the team that we have now is an attacking team.

“We cannot sit back and wait for miracles. We would want people who can add value, we would want people who can create and score goals and Ocean is one of them,” he said.

“Dynamos being Dynamos, we would want to try and do better than what we did last year. We were number five last year and doing better than last year means number four, number three, number two and number one and we are looking at that and probably take each game as it comes,” said Mutasa.

The Glamour Boys, who are expecting another set of maximum points from their abandoned match against Chapungu, maintained pressure on the leading pack by jumping into fourth place.

They have 33 points in the bag, three behind Ngezi Platinum Stars, who appear to have rediscovered their winning form again.

The platinum miners were the biggest winners of the weekend after thrashing Hwange 4-1 at Baobab.

Tonderai Ndiraya’s men are in imperious form, having scored four goals again in the previous match when they outclassed Black Rhinos 4-2 at the resumption of the second half of the season.

They have 37 points and enjoy a two-point cushion over nearest rivals FC Platinum and Chicken Inn.

FC Platinum beat Bantu Rovers 1-0 in Bulawayo and have a better goal advantage compared to the Gamecocks who beat Bulawayo City by the same margin in a Bulawayo derby.

Giants Highlanders also stayed within touching distance following the 2-0 win at Shabanie Mine.

Their coach Erol Akbay was encouraged by their win away at Maglas.

“The good news is we are very closer to FC Platinum and we still have a very big chance to win the league. We still have 17 games to play and I urge our fans to be patient and support the team.

“We lost a number of experienced players and the club currently has no money to get the best players, but I have hope in the youngsters I have and I feel they just need time to gain the necessary experience,” said Akbay.