The Sunday News
WHETHER one likes it or not, the goings on at Highlanders in recent months have been symptomatic of “how not to run a football club”, let alone the oldest footballing institution in this soccer loving country, a valuable brand of unparalleled importance.
We have witnessed at Highlanders incidents of inconsistency in the field of play, surprising team selection, indecisive decisions from the technical bench. In fact in most of the team’s matches this season, there was a missing link.
The Highlanders ship resembled a team without a captain. The endless cycles of ineptitude, poor decision making and weird/mundane appointments of members of the technical staff, points to a leadership devoid of any initiatives led by a team bereft of ideas.
Yes! We should be worried about the goings on at a big brand called Highlanders. Bosso is a big institution in this country. It is bigger than Peter Dube, who runs it today, bigger than board chairman Mgcini Nkolomi, it is bigger than its former greats such as Peter Ndlovu and Bruce Grobbelaar, it is bigger than its former chairman Kennedy Ndebele, it is bigger than a fellow known as Tshinga Dube, and even Yours Truly Phineas “Mido’’ Mukwazo.
In fact it is bigger than everyone including the guys who will run it in the future. Simply put Bosso is a big brand, for when it sneezes everyone catches the cold. Hawu bantu, siyibulalelani ithimu yabantu, ithimu yezwe lonke, such a great institution founded by the grandsons of OUR KING LOBENGULA.
The Highlanders executive draws its mandate from the multitude of the clubs’ followers, the real owners of the game. The club followers gave the executive the all clear mandate to run the club at their AGM. But for the past two years the club has known no “peace’’ going through turbulent times, firing and hiring coaches. Kelvin Kaindu went, the likes of Mark Mathe, Cosmas “Tsano” Zulu (twice) to Bongani Mafu, Amini Soma-Phiri, et al have come in, in useless hopeless transitions.
But they say “The greater the difficulty, the more glory in surmounting it, (and that) skilled pilots (should) gain their reputation from storms and tempests.’’ But the Highlanders family has failed to use that dictum as a tonic for success.
Tshinga Dube, a Highlanders benefactor for a long time, reminds us that shooting the messenger is not usually the solution.
“You can never find bad soldiers, but bad officers,’’ he reminds us. Perhaps we should listen. THERE IS a need for leadership renewal at Bosso. Bosso host “little” Dongo Sawmills at Emagumeni this afternoon. The “body language’’ is that of uncertainty.
Will that match remind us of how the MIGHTY have fallen? Asazi!
