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Robson Sharuko in CAIRO, Egypt
TENDAI NDORO disappeared from the radar after just 69 minutes and, after a further 12 hours and 21 minutes of football involving more than a dozen others and spread over two years, failed to make any difference as the Warriors’ reliance on just two players – Knowledge Musona and Khama Billiat – for goals was brutally exposed.

As the dust begins to settle on a 2019 AFCON campaign that promised a lot, but delivered very little, the ghosts that stalked the Warriors during this adventure, which started at home in June 2017, are beginning to tumble from their hidden enclosures and paint a grim picture.

The team’s shortcomings, especially in an attack that was solely dependent on Musona and Billiat for goals, were masked by the strong performance of the duo but, once their combination – as was the case at this AFCON finals – was disrupted, or one of them lost his touch, the crisis that exploded transformed the side into a crippled unit.

As long as Musona was firing, as was the case during the qualifiers when his five goals, including a hat-trick against Liberia, made the difference, and Billiat kept providing the supporting cast, with three goals during the qualifying period, the Warriors kept sending a message that they were in fine health.

But, as has been exposed by an in-depth analysis into their campaign, nothing could have been further from the truth because, once Musona lost his touch, as was the case during this tournament, the Warriors badly lost their way and, without the influence of their captain, staggered from one poor result to another.

Of course, he is our talisman, and has been the star of their team for about a decade, but he is also human and, it appears, we never looked into a Plan B, where we had to deal with the possibility of having our skipper misfiring at this tournament, and explore the possible remedies for such a crippling situation.

In the end, as shown at the tournament where the Warriors struggled for rhythm without the leadership, and goals, of their skipper, the entire burden was shifted to Billiat and, although he turned on a very good show throughout the three games, he could not drag his Warriors into the next round on his own.

By the end of the three group games, Billiat appeared to be running on an empty tank, his energy sapped by the demands of having to lead the line on his own, in a team where his efforts were not being complemented by his teammates, and opponents started targeting him because they knew he was the only threat.

The Warriors played nine matches in this AFCON campaign and failed to score in three of those games – against Egypt and the DRC at the finals here and against Liberia in Monrovia in their penultimate qualifier.

They scored 10 eight times, at an average of 1,11 goals per match, but that could also be deceiving because three of those goals came from one game, in the very first qualifier against Liberia at home in June 2017, and from one man, Musona, who became the first Warriors skipper to score an AFCON hat-trick.

Six of those goals, three against Liberia, two against Congo-Brazzaville and one against the Democratic Republic of Congo, were all scored on the home front with Musona scoring four of them while Billiat provided the other two with strikes against the two Congolese sides.

Four goals were scored away from home, their best effort coming in Kinshasa when they scored twice – with Musona and Ronald Pfumbidzai on target – in the 2-1 win over the DRC while Billiat scored in the 1-1 draw in Brazzaville and then struck that goal in the 1-1 draw against Uganda at this AFCON finals.

Three times, when Billiat scored, no other Warrior scored in that match, with all the matches ending in identical 1-1 draws (1-1 against Congo in Brazzaville; 1-1 against the DRC in Harare and 1-1 against Uganda here in Cairo) while only once, in the 2-0 win over Congo-Brazzaville in Harare, did another Warrior score, once he was on target, and did the match end in a victory for the team.

But, the weakness was neither Billiat nor Musona, it was the absence of others to step in and deliver for the team, especially on the occasions the leading duo was having a bad day or the opponents had found a way to suffocate the threat they usually carry in the colours of their country.

“We the strikers let the nation down, we just need to step up and take the responsibility of converting the chances because football is a game of scoring,’’ Billiat said.

“If you don’t score, you don’t stand any chance.”

Ndoro was the first of the out-and-out forwards to be handed the responsibility to provide that supporting act, in terms of supplying the goals, in the very opening qualifier against Liberia at the National Sports Stadium two years ago when the Warriors were under the guidance of coach Norman Mapeza.

But, the lanky forward lasted just 69 minutes at the National Sports Stadium and, having produced a poor show in that game, vanished from the radar and was not considered for the next assignments.

But, those who replaced him didn’t fare any better and while Evans Rusike was a common feature for the team in this campaign, he didn’t find a way to score a goal and neither did Nyasha Mushekwi, Tino Kadewere, Talent Chawapiwa, Knox Mutizwa, Terrence Dzvukamanja and Rodwell Chinyegetere who also played some roles.

The other offensive midfielders, Ovidy Karuru and Kuda Mahachi, were also handed opportunities to play in this campaign but they also didn’t get onto the scoresheet.

Collectively, they had a shift of more than 12 hours, 30 minutes, playing for the Warriors in these AFCON qualifiers and, still, none of them was able to find the target.

At least, Mutizwa can point to the fact that he had what looked like a genuine goal, against the DRC in Harare, which was surprisingly ruled out for offside after Billiat had opened up the defence on the left channel.

But, given that what matters is how many goals you score, when you are playing as a striker, the way those who were carrying the hopes of their coaches, during this campaign, to deliver the goals, but somehow failed to complete that task, should have raised a red flag to the gaffers.

Maybe, that explains why, when Musona lost his bearings here, chances of the Warriors getting the goals they required to make an impression became very remote and, at the end of the showcase on Sunday, they had only scored once.