The Sunday News
Mbekezeli Ncube Sports Reporter
THE Zimbabwe Football Association is yet to respond to Southern Region Division One side Ntabazinduna Football Club’s complaints on bad match officiating in a match played at Luveve Stadium on 13 July against Bulawayo Chiefs which they lost 4-0. Ntabazinduna wrote a letter of complaint to Zifa citing poor officiating by match referee Bekithemba Moyo and “uneven standards” during the match that had no match commissioner.
Things came also came to head when Moyo gave Ntabazinduna striker Ralph Kawondera a contentious second yellow card for diving in the box.
Part of the letter reads, “We tried to get an explanation from the referee as to why Kawondera was given a red card and the referee referred us to the match commissioner who was nowhere to be seen. This raised a lot of questions as to why Zifa and the Referee’s Association failed to provide a match commissioner for a game of this magnitude.”
When contacted over the matter on Friday, Tumeliso Ndlovu the Zifa Southern Region secretary acknowledged receipt of the letter which he said he duly handed over to the Referees Committee.
“We saw the complaint letter from the team and we took it to the Referees Committee since they are the ones who deal with such issues. The committee needs to attend the matter and we’ll get back to Ntabazinduna soon” said Ndlovu.
On Wednesday a livid Ntabazinduna club secretary Paul Muherendi said the referee was against his team as it was not the first time that he has poorly officiated their match.
“The centre referee Bekithemba Moyo clearly has some sort of hidden resentment against this club because this is the second time he has issued a dubious red to this team in order to favour our opponents,” said Muherendi.
The Sunday News on Friday also spoke to Israel Mugwagwa, the Referees Co-ordinator for Bulawayo Province who said they would deal with the matter soon.
“We’ll deal with the case soon. It just happened in that match only that the match commissioner missed the match and the issue will be dealt with accordingly,” said Mugwagwa.
