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SHARUKO ON SATURDAY
IT has been a great year where sporting underdogs have punched above their weight — Leicester City defying 5000-1 odds to win their FIRST English Premiership title, Portugal refusing to melt in Paris to shock France to win their FIRST Euro title and the Cleveland Cavaliers upstaging favourites

Golden State Warriors to win the NBA title for the FIRST time.

Golf, without a dominant figure since Tiger Woods crumbled under the weight of injuries and off-the-course controversy, saw its flagship Major championships being grabbed by FIRST-TIME winners this year — Danny Willet taking the Masters, Dustin Johnson winning the US Open, Henrik Stenson taking the British Open and Jimmy Walker winning the US PGA title.

Angelique Kerber won her FIRST Grand Slam title at the Australian Open this year, beating favourite Serena Williams, and when she also won the US Open this month, her FIRST title at Flushing Meadows, she became the FIRST German player to win that title since the immortal Steffi Graff in 1996, while also toppling Serena from her position as world number one.

Of course, Garbine Muguruza, also won her FIRST Grand Slam title, shocking Serena at the French Open, becoming the FIRST Spaniard to win a Grand Slam on the women’s tour since Arantxa Sanchez-Vicario’s victory that was also delivered in the French capital in 1998.

And, of course, forgive me if you think I have downplayed it, this is the year our gallant Warriors ended 10 years of waiting, and all the frustrations that go with that, for a place at the Nations Cup finals, winning their ticket with a game to spare.

By the way, our Mighty Warriors wrote the romantic fairytale of the football tournament at the Rio Olympics by becoming the FIRST Zimbabwean representatives to play at that grand stage of the game.

If this is a sporting year, scripted for the underdogs, from little Iceland’s sensational victory over the English footballers who believe their inflated egos and massive salaries make them super-humans and should guarantee success, to Leicester joining a pantheon of major sporting upsets which cost bookmakers $15 million in payouts, then the domestic Premiership should provide us with a new chapter to this fascinating script.

And, it doesn’t matter, does it, should FC Platinum win it?

The Zvishavane miners lead an explosive race, by just a point, with six games left in the marathon, and should they hold on they could become the FIRST club from outside Harare and Bulawayo, to win the league championship in exactly 50 years, with Father Davies’ St Paul’s of Musami, Murehwa, being the only club to do that.

Or, let’s say, if CAPS United win it.

The Green Machine, just a point behind the leaders, have stubbornly refused to fall by the wayside, despite being weighed down by a barrage of challenges, including financial difficulties which could have destroyed their campaign, and are chasing a FIRST league title in 11 years and only a fourth in 36 years.

And Highlanders, just THREE points behind CAPS United, have bounced back in spectacular style, completing their first sweep of eternal rivals Dynamos in 10 years, and should they win the league title, this year, it will be their FIRST league championship in a decade.

The three leading contenders, in the championship race, might not be domestic football lightweights, but if one of them win the title, as is likely to be the case, they would have written another chapter in a year when those who were not expected to triumph —either because they have been serial failures in the past 10 years or, in the case of FC Platinum, are battling the vagaries of history — found a way to succeed.

WAS IT A JUSTIFIED REBELLION OR SIMPLY SHEER MADNESS?

Last Saturday, the CAPS United players staged another rebellion, something they do with frustrating regularity these days, when they initially refused to leave their team bus in protest over the delayed payment of their August salaries and delaying their Chibuku Super Cup first round tie against Tsholotsho by more than half-an-hour.

While the Green Machine players have a right to withhold their labour, in the event their employers are not delivering on their contractual obligations, it’s the manner in which the CAPS United players have styled their protests which leaves a lot to be desired and has fed into accusations they are just a bunch of mercenaries without the interests of this club at heart.

Last year, they travelled all the way to Bulawayo, went into camp on the eve of their game against How Mine and, then, at the very last minute — when they knew it was now impossible for their management to bring in other players to play in that match — decided they would not board the team bus to Luveve for the match.

They waited until the very, very last minute to stage their rebellion and, amid the chaos that exploded in the City of Kings, the game which had been scheduled to be broadcast live on SuperSport was abandoned.

That the CAPS United’s boss back then, Twine Phiri, was also the Premier Soccer League chairman, only piled the humiliation on the PSL leadership given the actions of his players had not only tainted, but strained, the relationship between the top-flight league and their official television broadcast partners.

The How Mine fans, and other neutrals, who had spent their hard-earned funds to travel to Luveve, were also inconvenienced by the in-house issues at CAPS United which had nothing to do with them, and the tragedy was that no-one was there to reimburse them the expenses they incurred that day.

Then, a few weeks later, they went to the Lowveld and turned on a performance, which was a mockery to their high standards, in what was a clear protest against their leadership, as they crashed to a humiliating 0-4 defeat at the hands of Triangle.

Some of their fans, who had also travelled all the way from the capital, could not stomach it and even tried to attack their players.

Englishman Mark Harrison, brought in at the beginning of that year to provide the technical touch the CAPS United leaders felt was needed, could not take it anymore and, on June 16 last year, he walked away from the club, saying he had suffered incredible psychological trauma, crossing the border to join Township Rollers in Botswana where he won the 2015/2016 league championship.

After a period of relative stability, the demons returned just before the trip to Hwange when the CAPS United players demanded to be paid in cash as if they were living on an oasis awash with cash on a desert where the reality is that cash has been hard to come by and rejecting the money that had been transferred into their bank accounts.

And last Saturday, they took their madness to another level, once again employing their tactics of waiting for the very last-minute to make their statement, and in the process inconveniencing Tsholotsho, who had nothing to do with their in-house issues, and had planned to travel back shortly after 5pm when the light was still fine.

Yes, they might have issues, just like the majority of the clubs, but for them to inconvenience opponents, who have nothing to do with their madness, to insult a sponsor who is the only one who has been injecting money into the league — both in the championship and the knockout tournament — in these tough economic times, is unacceptable.

For them to wait until the last minute, to withdraw their labour, leaving their coach without an avenue to bring in other players to play in that game, was a sensational act of sabotage that was also an insult to the fans who have stuck with this team even when it hasn’t rewarded them with a league title in 11 years of cumulative failure.

The same fans who shower them with cash donations, on the occasions they do very well, and whose patronage has remained strong in the 11 years the team has staggered in the darkness while their biggest rivals Dynamos have, within that period, won five league titles — including four on the trot — and qualified for the semi-finals of the CAF Champions League.

SACRIFICING A TOURNAMENT THAT COULD HAVE PROVIDED FINANCIAL RELIEF

Given the financial rewards that come with winning the Chibuku Super Cup, where a team needs to win just four games to take home $75 000, one would have thought this knockout tournament provided the CAPS United players with the best possible avenue of dealing with their financial challenges and all they needed to do was win the tourney.

But instead they chose to plunge into another rebellion and this deflected their focus and when they finally decided to play or rather simply fulfil the fixture, they suffered the embarrassment of being knocked out by a team they were largely expected to beat in their backyard having beaten Tsholotsho in Bulawayo.

Tsholotsho coach, Lizwe Sweswe, then provided the CAPS United players with a reality check in his post-match comments when he told reporters of the serious challenges he was facing just to assemble his team, who have their own serious financial challenges, and then take them all over the country for their assignments in the league and knockout tournaments.

Even club legend, Silver “Bhonzo” Chigwenje, severely criticised the current players, going to the extent of labelling some of them as mercenaries, and it’s hard to disagree with him when one considers that the Hwange players — whom the Green Machine failed to beat home and away in the league — haven’t been paid their salaries this year.

Bulawayo City, who thrashed CAPS United 3-1 in the City of Kings, have also had issues with non-payment of salaries and staged a protest, against their leaders by refusing to train, but only after they had hammered the Green Machine.

Wouldn’t it have had made sense that the players win the tournament, and the rich pickings that come with it, and then ask their leadership they want so much from the proceeds, or even everything they would have won, than engage in that rebellion, and lose everything as happened, while the fans — who have backed them in tough times — were also left to suffer?

Maybe, in the year of the sporting underdogs, Tsholotsho would still have won that game, without all the distractions that accompanied it, because —after all — Kelvin Kaindu tasted the joy, for the first time, of beating Dynamos the following day.

FOOTBALL ISN’T A HORRIBLE GAME, AFTER ALL

After dedicating last week’s column to the madness of that Bosso hoodlum, and the toxicity of the message that was displayed on his sickening placard, I have to say I was charmed this week to learn that football, after all, is such a beautiful game.

The family of a cancer-stricken five-year-old Sunderland fan, Bradley Lowrey, has raised £700 000 — with Everton donating £200 000 towards that cause — to enable him to fund potentially life-saving treatment in the United States.

Bradley, looking frail, captured the imagination of the world when he walked out as his club’s mascot in the league match against Everton and, at the five-minute mark of the game, both sets of fans chanted his name.

Now, he is on his way to the United States for treatment and that is largely because of the power of football.

TO GOD BE THE GLORY!

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

Khamaldinhooooooooooooooooo!

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