By ILYANA Sithole, ZIMBA WAVE MEDIA. Harare
With the Mayor’s Cheer Fund Cup which was slated for this weekend off the cards due to the withdrawal of the Harare Giants Dynamos FC, many have been left wondering as to why the team chose to play a division one team MWOS in Norton when they could have filled up Rufaro Stadium.
The much anticipated game will no longer be played even after the Mayor had given hope to soccer fans that the game would be the highlight that reveals the ground to Harare soccer fans as the location was central.
Mr Moses Maunganidze of Dynamos FC says, they were ready to play CAPS United and withdrawal was not them chickening out but “imagine we fill up the ground which has not been homologated, then there is a disaster, so for all our stakeholders we are saying let’s not bypass the due process. As long as the turf is good and has been spruced up, Rufaro has to pass the test then we will be ready to play”.
The Mayor had urged engineers to speed up the renovation process but Rufaro Stadium is still not yet ready to host games. Dynamos is a team that is not into politics and their reason for withdrawing is purely sporting and has nothing to do with politics.
“We wrote a letter to the Mayor saying, Mr Mayor, you want us to play on the 10th or 11th of February Mayors Cup but 5 days before the match we have not received confirmation on availability of the stadium. So as a Club we plan our matches in advance, because 7 days in advance we start to prepare for a match but how can we plan for a match without a venue. Imagine today we were going to wait for the Mayor to advise us that there was no match”.
With the Castle Premier League season starting on the 17th with Dynamos facing Ngezi Platinum, the team needed to have a last chance at perfecting their skills and this match would have been exactly what they needed. However, timing was of the essence and they had to look for a team to play as they did not want to hunt for a friendly match and find no team to play with because teams would have committed elsewhere.
He says in view of the Castle Premier League match the team needed to tone down in terms of friendly matches in preparation of the excruciating game against Ngezi Platinum.
“MWOS has equally competitive players who can make it as good as any Premier Soccer League team. So, we thought they could give our guys a tone down match, that is why last week we had Green Fuel and this week MWOS”. Maunganidze said the game is as per recommendation by the team and it will be used for technical aspects that need to be addressed. It will also test fit the Glamour Boys and the coaches will be able to close gaps and maintain what they see is good. He said, “Norton is just an extension of Harare so we want our fans to catch a real glimpse of Dembare for 2024”.
The club has been to Kariba and other places outside Harare and tomorrow will be the 1st match that will be close to home. The team is hoping that their fans will come out in numbers to support and promise their fans an interesting game as good as a PSL match.
The Mayor of Harare has once again failed to get the ground homologated on time as renovations have not yet matched up to required set standards for approval.
newsroom@zimbawavemedia.co.uk
