Zimbabwe: I’m a Proud Warrior

Robson Sharuko

10 June 2011

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Harare — I BEGAN to doubt the mission, when the clock hit the 85th minute mark, and the silence inside the stadium began to speak volumes about the emotional trauma that was crushing the spirits of everyone in the stands.

Only five minutes remained, in regulation time, and the brave Eagles of Mali, having been given a way back into the match through a goal as soft as the cheeks of a newly-born baby, were holding on comfortably for a point that would effectively close the door for us.

The scoreboard doesn’t lie, and it read Zimbabwe 1, Mali 1, and the clock wasn’t lying too and, as true as the fact that this was a winter’s afternoon in the capital, there were only five minutes left in regulation time.

We had tried everything possible, you have to say, and played our best football – as a national team – since Charles Mhlauri and his Class of 2006 defeated the World Cup-bound Black Stars of Ghana 2-1 in Ismailia, Egypt, at the Nations Cup finals.

The impressive Khama Billiat, playing his debut home match for the Warriors after an incredible 12 months in which he had risen from obscurity, stuck in the excellent Aces Youth Academy, to become a star at Ajax Cape Town in Super Diski, had scored a beauty to end a sweeping Zimbabwean move rich in quality.

But, for some strange reason, the near side assistant referee had seen what noone else could see and, in an error of gigantic proportions that was about to come back to haunt us, had mistakenly ruled that Khamaldinho had been in an offside position.

Television replays clearly showed the South African match official had got it all wrong but the decision, for all the tragedy of its wrongness, had to stand and, for all the tragedy of its fatal consequences on our campaign, stand it did.

It was like Guinea revisited, when the West Africans came to Rufaro two years ago, and forced a goalless draw when a headed effort by Gilbert Mushangazhike was somehow disallowed for reasons so strange the rules that were being used by the pathetic referee could only have been borrowed from Mars for use in this one and only game.

Where I could see disbelief, in the eyes of the clueless Valinhos as the cruel decision was passed, I could see confusion in the eyes of Norman Mapeza as he struggled to understand why his team always found itself on the wrong side of decisions by the match officials in this campaign.

They had been given a rough ride by the match officials in Monrovia, where they battled to a 1-1 draw, and were given a worse treatment by referees in Bamako, where they lost 0-1, with complaints to the match commissioner, by the Zimbabweans, bringing the incredible response that they also had a home game against Mali to make full use of.

Now, right in front of their fans, in their backyard, in the stadium that they call home, the Warriors were suffering from another big wrong decision by the match officials and you could see the pain written all over their faces, which told the hidden story of the torture that was going on inside their soul.

But we had recovered from that, Knowledge Musona had scored a beauty to push us into the lead, but we had conceded a soft goal for the equaliser, then saw Vusa Nyoni open fire but was thwarted by the impressive goalkeeper and Khamaldinho opening fire from an angle only to be thwarted by the ‘keeper.

Musona getting to the end of a lovely cross from Vusa and heading powerfully towards goal, from close range, only to be thwarted again by the excellent goalkeeper with a world-class save that would have been saluted by such grand football theatres like the Camp Nou, Anfield or Old Trafford.

Then, when the superb Gilbert Mapemba created space down the right and delivered a peach of a cross that asked Musona to only connect, hitting the target, for the goal that we all were crying for, our emerging Mr Goals could only direct his header away from target and, you felt at that stage, that this was the game gone.

Surely, we couldn’t have asked for more but the pain of failure, even after a gallant effort, is still the same and there is no honour in failing, and the reality was that if we had not won the game on Sunday, we would have failed in our mission.

So here we were, five minutes to go, and still failing in our mission and you could see the door closing on our hopes of making it to the 2012 Nations Cup finals, you could see all the dreams turning into a nightmare, you could see the ugly post-mortem that would follow and how characters were going to be assassinated.

But something stood out for me at that moment.

The fans, I realised, were not leaving the stadium.

Noone was abandoning the Warriors, even when it was clear that time was no longer friendly to our cause, and an estimated 35 000 people inside the old stadium stayed rooted to their seats believing that something would happen.

It was as if we were all bound by our fate that we would win this game, no matter how cruel time was playing games with our chances, and so we waited, and hoped, like those people trapped on the Titanic waiting, and hoping for, help.

“Fifteen hundred people went into the sea when Titanic sank from under us,” the elderly Rose said as she narrated her incredible tale at sea in that mega movie.

“THERE WERE TWENTY BOATS FLOATING NEARBY AND ONLY ONE CAME BACK. ONE! SIX (PEOPLE) WERE SAVED FROM THE WATER, MYSELF INCLUDED. SIX . . . OUT OF FIFTEEN HUNDRED.

“AFTERWARDS, THE SEVEN HUNDRED PEOPLE IN THE BOATS HAD NOTHING TO DO BUT WAIT. WAIT TO DIE, WAIT TO LIVE, WAIT FOR AN ABSOLUTION THAT WOULD NEVER COME.”

She could have been talking about us at Rufaro on Sunday.

The Rufaro crowd has a history of being as unpredictable as the English weather on a summer day and, now and again, we have seen it happening, fans abandoning their team, with five minutes left, as the picture becomes clearer that this could all turn into a doomed mission.

But Sunday was different and, in those dying minutes, the fans found their reason to believe and stayed inside the arena to try and push their team one last time, in an attempt to push it over the line, and you could feel the pregnant air of expectation.

Then, with time up on the clock, it happened and – just like Agent Sawu heading home a last-gasp goal to help the Dream Team beat Cameroon 1-0 at the National Sports Stadium – Musona was there to convert that penalty and give us a win that our performance deserved and which this special group of supporters deserved.

Sometimes, good guys can also come first.

A Breath Of Fresh Air

On the surface, this was just a victory, a narrow one in that case, a controversial one to some people, a cruel one to the negative Malians, a heartbreaking one to their skipper Mohamed Diarra who, at his peak was good enough to play for Real Madrid, and a tough one for the people of Mali who gave us a legendary football star called Salif Keita.

On the surface, this was just about three points added to the Zimbabwe tally, none to the Malians, a point still separating the two teams, a point still keeping Cape Verde in the lead and two points between Cape Verde and the Warriors and although Liberia were down, they were not out.

But the point is that there was more.

More, in the sense that the win helped strengthen the bond that exists between the Warriors and their fans, a relationship that had been tested to the limit by a poor run in the qualifiers that had seen the team take only two points out of nine in their first three matches.

More, in the sense that it helped breathe belief into the hearts of the Warriors’ fans after the doubts and heartbreak that followed the lifeless show at home, in the previous game, against Cape Verde that allowed the Atlantic Ocean islanders to steal a point from the National Sports Stadium.

More, in the sense that it proved that once we are united, for a certain cause, we have both the technical and playing resources to win against even the giants on the continent and that we dropped points against Cape Verde was largely because of the turmoil that was engulfing our divided house.

More, in the sense that it helped bury the myth that a team, stalked by the ghost of Asiagate, didn’t have the heart to win games for its country and its people and, in those 90 minutes, players like Method Mwanjali and Nyasha Mushekwi fought, and won, bigger battles related to their profiles as players who could be trusted.

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