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00SHARUKO ON SATURDAY 

THE clock had just hit 7pm last Friday, the Warriors were still stranded in town, their travel arrangements having degenerated into a mess — with all the disastrous consequences this horror story carried for a team that had charmed the country — and social media was exploding with both fury and anxiety.It was exactly 48 hours before the start of a game the Warriors were set to bring the curtain down, on their first successful Nations Cup campaign in a decade, but the 6 000 km between Harare and Conakry, the steaming capital of the Guinea perched on the shores of the Atlantic, looked like 60 000 km, as every minute passed and the levels of desperation increased.

The concern, among the Warriors and their fans, was justified.

After all, a trip into West Africa is always chaotic, there are a number of stop-overs in that part of the continent, and the last time the Warriors travelled to Guinea, only a dozen players and their coach Pagels made it to Conakry with the rest, including the bulk of the officials, stranded in the Senegalese capital Dakar.

Panic was also gripping our football leaders and, in their desperation, ZIFA acting chief executive Joseph Mamutse wrote to CAF asking for a postponement of the match from Sunday to Monday saying they had failed to get the connecting flights for the Warriors from either Addis Ababa or Nairobi.

What Mamutse, either for lack of knowledge or experience or both, didn’t know is that the CAF offices are always closed on Friday when his letter was sent to the continental governing body, they only reopen on Saturday and, by then, it would have been too late for them to sanction that postponement.

And, when CAF’s reply came on Saturday, the predictability of its contents was something Mamutse should have known, even before he had thought of writing that ill-advised letter, with the continent’s football leaders rejecting ZIFA’s appeal for the postponement of the game.

After all, given this was one of the games set to be televised live, on SuperSport who have paid a considerable amount of money for the rights to broadcast these games, it was simply not feasible for CAF to grant such a postponement as this would mean the crews, who had flown there to cover the game, changing their travel arrangements — something which isn’t easy in West Africa.

There was also the issue of Guinea’s European-based players, who had also made their travel arrangements to fly out to their bases either on Sunday after the match, or early on Monday, needing also to change their itineraries, something which isn’t easy in that part of the continent, and all this inconvenience being burdened on them by our shortcomings.

The match officials’ travel arrangements would also have to be changed while Guinea could rightly argue that they had been prejudiced of potential earnings, in terms of gate receipts, given that a Sunday evening match will always attract more fans to the stadium than a Monday evening game.

Given that I have been to Conakry three times, twice with the Warriors and once with the Young Warriors, with one trip seeing me spending more than a day at the airport in Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire, I knew that the unfolding saga related to the Warriors’ trip to Guinea was no laughing matter, but had the potential of having disastrous consequences.

And, knowing that our relationship with CAF has always been tricky with Issa Hayatou and his colleagues waiting for an excuse to punish us for the sins of our football leaders for that rebellion against the Cameroonian strongman in 1998, where his bid for all African votes in the FIFA presidential vote had to go to his preferred candidate Lennart Johansenn, was sabotaged by Southern African nations who voted for Sepp Blatter, I had reasons to fear the worst.

I had seen the same Hayatou, from close range at Abidjan’s Stade Houphouet Boigny, turn a blind eye to that attack on Memory Mucherahowa by the ASEC Mimosas players during the pre-match warm-up, sending the inspirational Dynamos skipper to hospital as he missed his team’s biggest game in their history, during the ’98 Champions League final second leg tie.

And, just a few months later, Hayatou struck again as he took away our rights to host the 2000 Nations Cup finals, on the flimsy grounds we had not prepared adequately for the tournament, when Burkina Faso, the previous hosts in ’98, had staged the same tournament in two cities — Bobo Dioulasso and Ougadougou in stadiums that made Rufaro look like Wembley.

Against that grim background, I had every reason to fear the worst, including the heartbreaking possibility of the Warriors being thrown out of a tournament whose finals they had already booked their place at, for the first time in 10 years, should our boys fail to make the trip — as was getting increasingly possible on that Friday night — to Guinea.

Stuck in my little office, as Harare’s CBD Friday evening traffic madness played out in the capital’s streets, with my Twitter account exploding with messages of concern from Warriors’ fans dotted around the world, I had a choice to either wait for the tragedy to unfold or play a small part to try and provide a little helping hand.

CHOOSING NOT TO BE PART OF THE BAND THAT PLAYED ON

Two movies have been released and a lot has been said about the eight musicians who formed the band that played on after the Titanic struck that iceberg in 1912 and started sinking as the Atlantic waters flooded its compartments, and paid for it with their lives after the massive ship went down.

Amid that chaos on Friday night, I had a choice to either be part of the band that was playing on, with disastrous consequences for the Warriors, in particular, and our country, in general, wait for the saga to come full circle, come up with a brilliant headline and story for tomorrow’s paper which captured the tragedy or try and play a part to resolve the situation.

I had long concluded that this was bigger than ZIFA, who might have fallen short in the way they had prepared or not prepared for this trip, but this was about our country and, amid an explosion of nationalistic spirits that subdued my journalistic instincts, I picked up the phone and dialled the number of the Sports Minister, Makhosini Hlongwane.

He did not pick the call, and my desperation levels exploded, but he soon cooled it down when he returned the call moments later.

“We have a serious crisis on our hands, Honourable Minister,” I barely could speak and, after the conversation was over, notes having been exchanged, including suggesting to him that the only way out of the mess, as things stood, was to try and get a chartered Air Zimbabwe flight to take the boys to Guinea, the good Minister — who told me he had been advised the Warriors would fly out at around 2am the following day — started putting things into motion.

Still social media was relentless, my phone could hardly stop ringing, a series of meetings were going on as Hlongwane and ZIFA boss Philip Chiyangwa tried to find a solution and it was not until very, very late in the night when Ozias Bvute, the former Air Zimbabwe chairman, who also played a very big part on that dramatic Friday night, called me to say a plane had been secured and the trip was on.

At long last, after nervy hours that seemed like days, we could announce to the country that the trip was on and the relief was incredible, I remember telling someone who called me wanting to know whether the Warriors would travel, exploding with joy on the other side of the line, when I told him that an Air Zimbabwe plane had been secured for the trip.

This is what this team means to the people of this country.

Hlongwane told me this week that he barely slept that Friday night, and I could understand and felt for him, Bvute said he wasn’t a hero who had moved mountains, when it comes to his service for his country, he said he would do it again, and again, and again, even if it meant that he remains in his office, as happened that Friday night, until after midnight.

In the week that Hollywood released Clint Eastwood’s movie about the ‘Miracle On The Hudson’, when the captain of US Airways Flight 1549 made an emergency landing in the New York’s Hudson River in 2009, with all 155 passengers and crew miraculously surviving on of the greatest stories to have a happy ending, it was fitting that there was a happy ending for what would have been a disaster for the Warriors and this nation had things turned otherwise last week.

REMEMBER CALLISTO, A PROPHET HAS NO HONOUR IN HIS HOME TOWN

Warriors coach Callisto Pasuwa has been receiving some severe battering, in recent days, amid reports that his selection hand when it comes to choosing players for the national team is influenced by the hidden hand of his manager Gibson Mahachi.

Pasuwa might have been dreaming of a deserved break, this week, after finally completing his 2017 Nations Cup qualifying mission in which he transformed his men from under-achievers who suffered the embarrassment of a first round, preliminary stage exit in the 2015 AFCON qualifiers at the hands of Tanzania, into one that qualified for Gabon with a game to spare.

Not even the fact that he has been the only coach in Southern Africa to guide his nation to Gabon has been good enough to earn him the credit which his fans believe he deserves and instead, all that he has been getting is relentless criticism of the choice of the players who qualified for the 2017 Nations Cup finals including his ‘keeper Tatenda Mukuruva, who conceded just three goals in five matches.

That his defence performed better, in six matches, than Africa’s number one team, Algeria, has been conveniently forgotten, and that the Warriors had the highest number of points, highest number of wins, lowest number of defeats, highest number of goals scored and lowest number of goals conceded throughout Southern Africa, has deliberately been ignored.

Of course, Pasuwa isn’t perfect, no-one is, but one gets a feeling that he sometimes doesn’t get the credit he deserves and there are people out there, just waiting for a window of opportunity, to criticise him if not for his selection choices, even when those players win him matches, then for his tactics.

There are areas that Pasuwa need to improve, like his reading of the opponents, but we should help him by sending him to work with experts who can make that difference in his game.

Blessing Moyo had a shocker of a first half in Conakry, but he is the same player who played decently in that first win for the Warriors in Malawi and all that the critics choose to see are his shortcomings when he fails as was the case in Guinea.

Coaches have players who might not appeal to journalists or supporters, who deliver for them and Sunday Chidzambwa used to trust Lazarus Muhoni, when many people were saying he didn’t deserve to play alongside Peter Ndlovu, and he kept delivering for Mhofu, including a winner against Mali that was crucial in us ending more than 20 years of waiting for a place at the Nations Cup finals.

But Pasuwa shouldn’t lose sleep over the critics, after all as my colleague Bishop Lazarus reminds us all the time, even our Lord Jesus Christ was rejected by his own people.

“When the Sabbath came, He began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard Him were amazed. ‘Where did this man get these things?’ they asked…Isn’t this Mary’s son and the brother of James…Jesus said to them, ‘Only in his home town, among his relatives and in his own house is a prophet without honour,’ . . . he was amazed at their lack of faith,” the Bible tells is in Mark 6:1-6.

THEY HAVE EVEN STARTED COMPOSING POEMS AT CAPS UNITED

Maita KepeKepe

Zienda nakuenda vamuyera ruvara rweshizha

Vamuyera dzetse mutunga dzese

Mutsika panotinhira.vanogara muguta rinogara vanendarama.

Vane uturu zvekuti gunguwo dema rekusunga mucheka muchena rinobva rafira ipapo.

Wakaoma iwe KepeKepe Shaisa Mufaro.kukunda kwako kwashaisa vamwe vane ruvara rwedenga madzvinyu mufaro,

Hona hachabudi mumwena nekuti zuva hakuchina

Aiwa zvaonekwa maKepeKepe, ramba wakadaro kusvika taitora komichi yemwaka uno

Motisvitsirawo kunavaChitembwe, vaChitembwe votisvitsirawo kunavaJere, vaJere vochidzosawo nekwatiri vatsigiri vavo

Isu tozopedzisa nekusvitsa shoko kwarinofanira kusvika kuvatambi vacho.

Haiwa ndatenda chaizvo zvaonekwa Green Muchina KepeKepe vanozvirovera vese muchinyararire

 

TO GOD BE THE GLORY!

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

Khamaldinhoooooooooooooooooo!

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