Dynamos and Highlanders are headed for a collision course with their sponsor BancABC if they participate in the NetOne Charity Shield amid revelations that the tournament’s rules and regulations have not been amended. Report By Brian Nkiwane
The mobile service providers have decided to have four teams contest in this year’s edition, giving the entire mandate to their subscribers to vote for the participants through a short message service (SMS) platform.
Dynamos, who are the defending champions and Highlanders are favourites to get the highest number of votes.
What puts the two teams in a fix is that both of them are sponsored by BancABC, the financial institution which barred DeMbare from wearing the charity shield sponsors’ branded kits.
Speaking to Standardsport this week after the disbursement of the money raised during the match to 14 charitable organisations, NetOne Marketing and Sales director Memory Ndoro-Mandiya said they were not going to change the rules.
“What happened last year is that after withholding Dynamos’ prize money, PSL clubs met and deliberated on the issue. They all agreed that as NetOne we had taken the rightful stance. We are sticking to our rules and regulations. All the clubs that are going to participate in this cup are supposed to wear our branded kits,” Mandiya said.
She added that there were plans to meet Dynamos executive members to discuss the issue further as they had made a sudden U-turn on the prize money.
“We still stand by our resolution, but from our own pockets, we are going to reward Dynamos players with a token of appreciation because they participated in this tournament. We are to pay all Dynamos players that took part US$500 each as well as their technical team staff. The budget is not going to be anyway close to US$50 000, but it will amount close to US$13 000,” she added.
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Since its inception in 2011, Harare football giants Dynamos have won the cup twice, beating Motor Action in all the two finals.
Last year, Dynamos did not get their prize money after the cup game was marred by some misunderstandings emanating from the problem of which kit the Glamour Boys were going to use on the match day.
DeMbare’s flagship sponsors BancABC argued that DeMbare were not supposed to wear the Charity Cup sponsors kit which had the NetOne logo.
