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OUR Mighty Warriors stand on the verge of making history at Rufaro tomorrow by becoming the first local national football team to qualify for the Olympic Games. It will be a mighty achievement, if they can make it, and all they need is to beat Cameroon and the glory will be theirs and our nation will celebrate for months until they play their first game in Rio de Janeiro.

Since 1980, when we became an Independent nation, only one national team has managed to qualify for the Olympic Games.

That came in the year of our Independence, when our national women hockey team qualified for the 1980 Olympic Games in Moscow, Russia.

And, they didn’t only go there to make up the numbers, but stunned the global sporting family by winning the gold medal.

Forever known as the Golden Girls here for their phenomenal achievement, those Golden Girls set the benchmark on which all our national teams will always be measured.

Their names are etched in gold, in recognition of their grand achievement for their nation, and no story of Zimbabwean sport will ever be complete without them being mentioned.

Now, tomorrow, another national women’s team, the Mighty Warriors, are only 90 minutes away from qualifying for the Olympic Games.

At least, they need just a 1-0 win for that dream to come true.

It’s not going to be easy, given that in Cameroon, they face one of the best women national teams on the continent who have been to the World Cup and came second at the recent African Games.

But the Mighty Warriors know that they need to beat the best if they have to be counted among the best.

And, tomorrow, they have their golden chance to do that.

That the team has battled so far, given all the challenges they have faced in this adventure, is in itself an achievement that needs to be celebrated.

After all, they have operated in a poisoned environment where chaos was the order of the day with the leadership of women football being suspended, their coach being booted out and the players feeling they were being neglected by ZIFA.

But that is all in the past and, after all, Cuthbert Dube, the man whose leadership of ZIFA was heavily criticised, has since been removed from his position.

What is important right now is for all of us to come together, for the sake of our nation, and the new era of football, post the Dube-madness, can be kick-started in style if our Mighty Warriors qualify for the Olympic Games.

The coming in of a new Sports and Recreation Minister, Makhosini Hlongwane, has breathed life into all sporting disciplines and, even our cricketers, remembered how to win a series for the first time in two years when they beat Ireland.

Yesterday, they put Afghanistan to the sword with a ruthless demolition in the first One Day International in Bulawayo.

Minister Hlongwane has shown the freshness to be involved in what is happening in our sport, a hands-on approach that is different from former Sports Minister Andrew Langa, whose indifference to our national cause was alarming.

The new Minister was there when the Mighty Warriors needed a helping hand, with their trip to Cameroon for the first leg of this encounter hanging in the balance, as he mobilised resources for them to travel at the last minute.

Working in partnership with his colleagues in Government, he ensured that their airfares and allowances were raised and the team paid the nation back with a gritty performance that has now thrust them within just 90 minutes of qualifying for the Olympic Games.

Yesterday, Hlongwane was at the Mighty Warriors training session to address the players and the technical team and give them the assurance that the Government and people of Zimbabwe were fully behind their cause.

Of course, there are no easy games at this level of competition and Cameroon will start as favourites on the basis of their pedigree but we know that, if we do the right things, we can slay the West Africans.

We know that we have the kind of players who can rise to the occasion, for the sake of their nation, and deliver the kind of performance that we are looking for and get the result that will send us into celebrations.

Our football has suffered for too long, especially in the past five years when its leadership appeared not concerned about the sport but petty fights that dragged us back, and it’s time that those wounds heal.

It is important that we show the world that we still can play football, at a high level in this country, even against a depressing background where our Warriors were expelled from the 2018 World Cup qualifiers without kicking a ball.

This assignment for the Mighty Warriors tomorrow is a big one and it could help a game that needs such a success story and a nation that needs something to cheer its spirits.

We can do it girls, we haven’t come this far to just donate a place to Cameroon to be at the Olympics, and together we will make it as one united nation.

Go Mighty Warriors Go!

We also hope the Warriors will also do us proud when they battle against Lesotho, in Bulawayo tomorrow, in the first leg of their final showdown for a place at the African Championship of Nations finals next year.