Keep the game cool, clean

07 Apr, 2017 - 00:04 0 Views
Keep the game cool, clean

The ManicaPost

ESTEEMED followers of the game of football, thank you for finding time for interaction.

Off we go!
The ball was set rolling last weekend in the 2017 edition of the Castle Lager Premier Soccer League season and already some interesting talking points have emerged: champions CAPS United being held by returnees Shabanie Mine in their title defence bid; giants Dynamos in faltering start; Chicken Inn making light work of and clobbering neighbours Bantu Rovers; Highlanders in derby delight against Bulawayo City; newcomers Yadah Stars holding their own against cross-town rivals Harare City.

While this season promises to be an exciting one, the marathon can be made even more engaging and absorbing if we rid it of two vices that plagued the game with a virulent virus last year — bad officiating and violence. This double trouble, if unfettered, can plunge the otherwise game to the despairing depths of a pitiless bottom.

Yes, football may be a highly emotive game, but we just have to think with our heads and not heads when rooting for our respective teams.

Violent conduct by both players and supporters is as bad as unfair handling of matches by referees.

Only recently, Botswana referee, Joshua Bondo, appeared to be head-butting and punching an Angolan player following remonstrations over a free-kick he had awarded against the visitors in a friendly match against South Africa.

And this season, already, we have a had an embarrassing incident of a barefaced CAPS United fan — Givemore Mukozho — plastering an ugly face onto the game after he was captured on camera openly peeing in public at the National Sports Stadium during his team’s CAF Champions League first round, second leg tie against TP Mazembe.

With a red card flashed already (Walter Mukanga, Ngezi Platinum Stars) and a hotly contested penalty (against Dynamos, versus FC Platinum), the calls for fair play immediately become loud and should grow as the season progresses.

Last season Victoria Falls Tigers defender, Lethukuthula Mathe and Artwell Nyoni of Technosphere attacked and assaulted referees, Bekeleza Makeka and Mhaka Magare respectively in two separate incidents within a week in matches involving Amagagasi in the Southern Region Division One.

Followers of Friday Football Echoes may recall that Yours Truly last season dedicated time and effort to two installments on this space — under the headlines “With referees like these . . .” and “Rid the game of hooliganism” — which dwelled on the need to nip these twin evils in the bud.

Reported repeated incidence of such untoward behaviour last season was disturbingly worrisome and during the current campaign we have to weed it out.

Let biased officiating and violence not taint the game, please, blight the season and soil its dignity and reputation as a unifying sport and vehicle for communal development that can be used for social cohesion.

We, therefore, cannot afford to lend credence, perhaps inadvertently, to cynics’ assertion that football is a game of gentlemen played and supported by hooligans.

All stakeholders, thus, share a collective and common responsibility of protecting the game from any forces that may infiltrate, badly influence and eventually dilute its power of positive transformation of lives.

Sportsmanship and fair play have to prevail all the time.

Football has to be the biggest winner at the end of the day.

We simply have to keep the game cool and clean.

It’s Game On, Play On!

Feedback:

So far so good for Dynamos. I think we should give our young players enough support and they will make it. There is a time for everything under the sun. Lodza [coach Lloyd Mutasa], pachine mufambo, chitosunga dzisimbe. Dynamos are a big team and we want good results. It is your butterfly moment [FC Platinum coach Norman] Mapeza; only time will tell. Tiri kuda kuona kuchawira tsvimbo nedohwe mukupera kwegore.

Thank you, Gamechanger, for your updates. Keep the kettle boiling. —Dynamos fan, Terrence Mwedzi.

[Arsenal coach Arsene] Wenger seems to be taking for granted the coincidence of [his] first name almost rhyming with [the] club’s name that he thinks he owns it and is there to stay. He may have stayed his welcome forgetting that a good guest knows when to leave the house. Besides, failure seems to favour the old. — Crispen Tendai Masenhu.

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