BY ISLAM SABULINO.
Cape Town, South Africa. (News of The South) The Zimbabwe Netball team, The Gems problems off the field have continued to haunt them with the latest issue of then failing to travel to South Africa in time for the match against Uganda, Friday morning.
Zimbabwe’s failure to arrive in Cape Town, South Africa for their opening match against Uganda resulted in the “Walk-Over” in their first African Netball Cup match.
The Zimbabwe Netball Association(ZINA) had initially requested that the match be moved to 8pm on Friday after the team had dismally failed to travel on time to catch 8am the actual time for kick-off. Zina could not manage to convince both Uganda and the tournament officials to postpone the match until the end of the tournament and this led to the bitter “Walk-Over” by Uganda.
As this was not bad enough, the Zimbabwe Gems almost failed to travel to South African hosted tourney had it not been for the intervention of the National Foods who unveiled a sponsorship package to the tune of $250 000 which was meant for the team’s travel to Cape Town.
The National Foods’ sponsorship package caters for accommodation and allowances for both officials and the players.
In their second encounter, the Gems, who travelled with an assistant coach, Ropafadzo Mutsauki, following the first team’s coach acrimonious absence, lost 69-39 to South Africa in a match played at Belleville Velodrome in Cape Town.The assistant coach attributed the defeat to fatigue as a result of a long travel from Harare to Cape Town.
The loss means that Zimbabwe’s hopes of progressing to the second round of the tournament are now hanging in the balance especially with Uganda “Walk-Over” after the team could not arrive in time for their opening encounter.
However, Zimbabwe senior Netball team gaffer Mr Lloyd Makunde later on explained the reasons for his absence from the travelling team that he was not actually fired by Zina as has been paraded by some media sections in the country.
Makunde, who led Zimbabwe to their first World Cup appearance in Liverpool, England this year, claimed that he is still the national teams’ gaffer despite of him not part of the travelling team to South Africa.
“I am still head coach of our netball national team.The only reason why I am not part of the delegation is that I am attending a Zimbabwe Olympic Committee run workshop for elite coaches”, claimed Makunde.
The workshop on sport ethics deals with issues that has to do with application of science and medicine in sport, safe sport and doping in sport generally.
Sponsorship issues in Zimbabwe have become thorn in the flesh for most sports disciplines with a a number of big companies failing to take sport seriously due to “trust” issues in sport.This is a direct contrast with our neighbour South Africa where companies are involved in cut-throte-competition to sponsor sporting activities, therefore nurturing the local talent to its maximum level.
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