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FOR the fourth time in a row, our Warriors are going to the African Championship of Nations finals and the nation expects our boys to do even better than their fine run in South Africa last year, when we came within just a penalty shoot-out victory for a place in the final. The Warriors completed a comprehensive 4-2 aggregate victory over Lesotho and could afford the luxury of missing a penalty against Lesotho in Maseru on Sunday, as they booked their ticket to the 2016 CHAN finals in Rwanda.

It has been a fruitful two weeks for domestic football, with the Mighty Warriors making history last week by becoming the first Zimbabwe team to qualify for the 2016 Olympic Games, while the Warriors powered into the CHAN finals for the fourth successive tournament.

Whether by design, or default, the good results have coincided with the removal of the unpopular Zifa Board, led by Cuthbert Dube, who were booted out of office by councillors who felt that their leaders had terribly lost their way and were no longer executing the mandate to take Zimbabwe football forward.

The appointment of a youthful Sport and Recreation Minister, Makhosini Hlongwane, to replace Andrew Langa, has brought in the energy and a hands-on-approach that sport, in general and football, in particular, badly needed in this country.

Hlongwane was in Maseru on Sunday to cheer the Warriors in their final battle for a place at the 2016 CHAN finals and addressed the players, just before this crucial assignment, reminding them of the national responsibility that they were carrying and why it was important that they get the result they needed to qualify for the finals in Rwanda.

“Zimbabwe football, in the field of play, has definitely turned a corner and the narrative has changed. It’s now clear that our football, with a bit of support, is able to get back to winning ways,” Hlongwane said after the team had secured their ticket to the CHAN finals.

“For the collective of sport, this is extremely important because sport, as you know, is a universal language of happiness, of unity, of oneness. The deficit in sport is beginning now to be addressed by the wins in football.”

Hlongwane is right, the days when our football was staggering in the darkness, when we were being knocked out in the preliminary rounds of the Nations Cup qualifiers, are truly behind us and slowly, but surely, we are finding our way back into the light. But we shouldn’t reduce ourselves to a nation that derives a lot of joy in merely qualifying for these major football tournaments.

We have to transform ourselves into a country that values the importance of making a big impression at these tournaments and if our neighbours and fierce rivals, Zambia and South Africa, can boast having won the Nations Cup before, we should tell ourselves that it’s something that we, too, can do.

There is no doubt that we have the players who can take us to dizzy heights and all that we need is to ensure that we sort out the administrative shortcomings which, for the past five years under Dube’s watch, were pegging us backwards.

We need to prepare well for the 2016 CHAN finals so that when we arrive in Rwanda we will be well equipped for the challenge that awaits us as we try to do better than finishing fourth in the last tournament in South Africa last year.

We need to avoid the ugly events that we saw in Bulawayo last week, when the Warriors were forced to boycott their training sessions in protest over unpaid allowances and bonuses, because these are the distractions that have been preventing us from realising our true potential in football.

Hlongwane says it’s his mandate to ensure that the ugly back page headlines, which used to be part of Zimbabwe football during the forgettable era when Dube was in charge, should be changed into beautiful stories chronicling the success of our teams.

Once that is done, of course, it means that our football will transform itself into a brand that attracts corporate partners again and the more that they come on board, it means the game will be in better shape to take care of our teams and with better preparations, there is nothing that can stop our boys and girls from doing wonders.

The fans have waited for a long time to see this dream turning into reality and our players are hungry to showcase their skills against the best on the continent and everything, right now, points to every success future for Zimbabwe football.