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Robson Sharuko Senior Sports Editor

AN industry, which employs 540 footballers, including 90 teenagers, and about 100 technical staff members, was brought to a sudden halt on Tuesday, and was shamelessly used as a sacrificial pawn in a desperate bid to hold on to power.

The decision plucked from hell, also threw the future of entire domestic football industry, which employs about 24 500 people according to ZIFA Covid-19 bailout figures, into turmoil.

It left the top-flight clubs with a bill running in excess of US$100 000 in wasted resources, and they will have to find a way to foot similar crippling costs when sanity eventually prevails.

Sugar Chagonda, a member of the ousted ZIFA board who has broken ranks with his colleagues to accept the SRC decision to dissolve their leadership, said the decision to bar the referees amounted to sabotage. Bryton Malandule, who was the leader of the ZIFA Referees Committee before the dissolution of the board, has been fingered as the man who triggered the impasse by directing match officials not to take charge of the league matches.

Our sister newspaper, the Chronicle, reported on Wednesday that referees advised them that the order not to take charge of the games came from Malandule and two other members of the ZIFA Referees Committee.

In that moment of madness, Malaundule and his colleagues were responsible for:

• Bringing to a sudden halt a domestic football industry which employs 450 senior professional footballers at the country’s 18 PSL clubs.
• Disrupting a local football industry which employs 90 of the best teenage footballers, in the country, who are dotted at the country’s 18 PSL clubs.
• Bringing to a sudden halt a domestic football industry which employs 18 head coaches and about 36 assistant coaches at the country’s 18 PSL clubs.
• Disrupting a local football industry which employs at least 18 team doctors, 18 physiotherapists and an estimated 90 other people in the clubs’ security wings. Ensuring that 90 match officials, who were set to be in action during the midweek games, providing a service they would be paid for, would not get a chance to do so.
• Derailing the start of the lower leagues, which provide an industry for thousands of players and coaches, given the PSL is being run as a test case, for authorities to authorise the return of the Division One and Two leagues.
• Embarrassing domestic football’s all-time partner, Delta Beverages, who have been backing the PSL even against the grim backdrop of the Covid-19 pandemic.
• Threatening the landmark sponsorship of Sakunda Holdings and Dynamos and Highlanders, which provided the game’s two biggest, and most successful clubs, with a kiss of life.

Delta Beverages had paid for advertisements on various media platforms, advising the public of the Castle Lager Premiership midweek fixtures.

The pick of the full programme of matches, which was supposed to run from Tuesday to yesterday spread across the country, was the scheduled battle between FC Platinum and Chicken Inn at Mandava, in Zvishavane.

However, the match, which would have pitted two of the coaches who took charge of the Warriors’ doomed 2022 World Cup campaign — Norman Mapeza and Joey Antipas — was called off amid a wave of confusion.

Seven other matches, including Dynamos’ first away trip for a league match in two years, where they were set to take on Triangle in the Lowveld, were also called off.

Highlanders’ homecoming show after the disturbances which brought their Castle Challenge Cup match against FC Platinum to a premature end in February last year, was also called off minutes before it exploded into action.

Bosso were set to meet Ngezi Platinum Stars in what would have been a repeat of the Chibuku Super Cup final in 2019  which the Bulawayo giants won 1-0.

Fifty four match officials who were set to take charge of the eight league matches, from Tuesday to yesterday, were ordered not to handle the games in the madness which followed the Sports Commission’s decision to dissolve the ZIFA board.

The majority of them, who were on assignment on Tuesday, had already arrived at the match venues.

“Some of the match officials had travelled from various parts of the country and had logged in for team inspection only to withdraw the withdraw their services before commencement of warm-ups,’’ the PSL said in a statement.

“The PSL is concerned about the lack of communication from the ZIFA Referees Committee as we tried to engage them, on the matter, to no avail.’’

Cracks have emerged within the ousted ZIFA board over the decision to draw referees, into this boardroom battle.

Chagonda, who broke ranks with his colleagues to accept the SRC decision to dissolve their leadership, said barring the referees was tantamount to witchcraft.

“I want to also categorically distance myself from any moves to sabotage any of the game’s structures, including the regrettable move to withdraw referees, from all Premier Soccer League matches,’’ he said in a statement.

“To me, that is synonymous with daylight witchcraft or sorcery.

“We were elected onto the ZIFA board on a mandate to promote, develop and grow the game of football and as such, we can’t destroy the very game we claim to protect, simply because our authorities have cracked the whip on us.

“We can’t further bring football into disrepute by withdrawing match officials at a time our long-suffering clubs have already incurred huge expenses involved in preparing for matches, including the costly Covid-19 PCR tests for players, and officials.

“We don’t want to send a wrong signal to the corporate world that has chosen to partner football when, at the altar of any disciplinary action against us, we are seen to throw spanners at everything (related to) Zimbabwean football.

“If it’s true, for whatever reason, this came from ZIFA, I am not ashamed to say this was not a collective board decision.’’