THE county’s biggest football clubs Highlanders and Dynamos, in a conjunction with their principal sponsors NetOne, are mulling to embark on roadshows denouncing hooliganism ahead of their return Castle Lager Premier Soccer League customarily ill-tempered fixture to be played at Barbourfields Stadium — just a week after the harmonised elections.
BY FORTUNE MBELE
The national elections will be held on July 30 and the Highlanders/Dynamos match is now pencilled for the weekend of August 4-5.
Highlanders CEO Nhlanhla Dube revealed during the club’s weekly press conference that the two clubs would engage in roadshows to market that game.
“We continue to be in conversation with our sponsors for a few other interesting things that will happen. You will see that jointly before the Dynamos match, which will now be after the elections. we will do a joint roadshow between Dynamos and Highlanders.”
He added: “We will work jointly under our sponsors. We want to do this to cultivate a culture of fandom that 90 minutes is football ‘war’. While 90 minutes can be football war but generally we are in one society and one space.
“We must appreciate that we need to respect certain norms and values. We will do a roadshow to promote the game and also to speak to issues of non-violence and negatives that come with fandom especially of the two biggest crowd pullers in the country,” Dube said.
The two clubs’ matches have usually been marred by violence, before, after and sometimes during the games and in the recent past and in the reverse fixture in April, police fired teargas to disperse a section of Dynamos fans who were bitter after their side lost 1-0 to Highlanders at Rufaro Stadium.
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However, that acrimony was internal to Dynamos and did not involve Highlanders with the Glamour Boys’ fans bitter at the club’s leadership for the team’s downward spiral in performance.
In May last year, the Highlanders and Dynamos match at Barbourfields Stadium was abandoned for crowd trouble after the Bulawayo giants’ fans pelted assistant referee Thomas Kusosa with missiles and invaded the pitch protesting an equaliser by Cameroonian Christian Epoupa.
The match was called off after 40 minutes.
The return leg in Harare, which ended in a 1-1 draw, also did not go without incident after Epoupa was shown the red card for head-butting Highlanders defender Peter Muduhwa in a goalmouth scramble.
In a mid-week statement admonishing fans from donning political party regalia during matches, the Premier Soccer League (PSL) confirmed that there would be no games for next weekend, which precedes the Election Day.
The political party regalia issue follows a fan wearing the ruling party Zanu PF regalia who was manhandled by fellow supporters during Highlanders’ home game against Herentals at Barbourfields Stadium at the Soweto End.
“This serves to advise all football fans that political party regalia is not allowed at Castle Lager PSL matches. We urge all clubs, security officers and the Zimbabwe Republic Police to ensure that no fans wearing any form of political party regalia or clothing with political messages are granted access into the stadia. We further advise that there will be no PSL matches on the weekend of July 28-29 2018. The Castle Lager PSL programme will resume on August 4-5 2018,” said Kudzai Bare, the PSL spokesperson.
