Zimpapers Logo

Sports Reporter

THE Rainbow Amateur Netball League have indicated it will not be possible to have any games this year after the disruption caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.

The league was suspended, in its infancy, after three rounds of matches.

RANL secretary-general, Moses Gukurume, said the focus now would be to try and pursue to return to competition next year.

They are also looking at holding their elective annual meeting as the current executive’s three-year term of office comes to an end.

“What we have done we have said this season is now a right-off. We don’t expect to play any games this year.

“This is the end of our term, as an executive, we are coming to an elective AGM so we don’t want to put a lot of plans for the incoming executive because we might be voted out of office.

“And, we are just leaving our doors open to say this coming (2021) season we wanted to start early, if at all, we get a go-ahead from the Ministry,” Gukurume said.

After securing a lucrative sponsorship package for the season from their sponsor, Glow Petroleum, there were high hopes for the 2020 programme.

But, the global pandemic has had ripple effects across all sectors, including sport.

Gukurume said they have come up with a proposal to be submitted to the sponsor on how they could proceed in the coming year.

“Unfortunately, netball is one of the sports that have been classified under high risk, so we are just still pursuing.

“We have put up a budget that includes everything required in the bio-bubble for submission to the sponsor to say we didn’t play this year, so the funding that was supposed to come for this year, can it not be channelled to cater for the issues that are involved in bio-bubble?” Gukurume said.

The league will be communicating with their stakeholders next week.

“We are basically saying next week we will be making a communication to all our structures to say we are coming to the end of the season.

“Nothing is going to take place this year, everybody is getting prepared for our elective AGM.

“Those who want to run for office, these are the requirements, and we make preparations for the elective AGM.

“This year has been a very frustrating year, both to the administrators and the sportspersons,” Gukurume said.