Dynamos have become a walking shadow, a tale told by a fool

By Robson Sharuko

It wasn’t probably their team’s failure to beat Highlanders that finally lit their blue torch paper at Rufaro on Easter Monday — after all it’s something which their once Glamour Boys have not done in three years in a league match.

For where they used to pride themselves as having not lost a league match to these royal warriors from the south, in about a decade, finding a way to beat them in a league match has suddenly become as tough a mission as scaling Mount Everest.

It wasn’t probably the fact that they had slipped into second-from-the-bottom of the log standings which blew the fuse of anger on Monday evening — after all they have been there before and found a way from that darkness and into the light.

In these days, where mediocrity is now a big part of their identity, it’s something that has become expected even though there are some, among their fans, who are still trapped on an island of denial in an ocean of reality.

It wasn’t probably the fact that, for the third game in four league matches, their men had failed to score again — after all their strike force looks, without the presence of Christian Epoupa, like a Mickey Mouse collection of rookie forwards lost in the haze of the challenges of providing goals for such a giant club.

For where iconic names like Charles Chirwa, Gift ‘Ghetto’ Mpariwa, Makwinji Soma-Phiri, Vitalis Takawira, Tauya Murewa, Moses Chunga and Daniel “Dhidhidhi” Ncube once represented them with distinction, they now have some rookie nameless chaps doing their best, which is certainly not good enough, to provide goals for them.

It wasn’t the fact that, for the fourth game in a row, their defence had been breached — after all the same weak rearguard had conspired to somehow let in three goals in a dozen minutes in a bizarre advertisement of both incompetence and suicidal tendencies in their last match against Shabanie Mine, of all teams.

Where Sunday Chidzambwa, whom they turned away in the confusion at the gates at Rufaro on Easter Monday and barred from watching this game leaving the national coach with no option but to return home, had provided them with a template of success, built on the foundation of a firm defence, this collection of defenders look like pathetic clones to men of steel and who used to wear this jersey with pride.

So what really caused the chaos at Rufaro on Monday?

Well, it was a toxic combination of all these factors which triggered the explosion of anger among the hard-liners who find it difficult to comprehend that a club that has, for long been the epitome of greatness, could be reduced into such an empty shell.

Conceding three goals in a dozen minutes against Shabanie was bad, very, very bad, but rather than accept that this was part of the reality of what they have become — very ordinary in every sense of the word — there were some, among their fans who dismissed this as a one-off aberration.

They chose to look at the positives, that they had scored three goals, even though this was against one of the weakest clubs in the Premiership.

They comforted themselves with lame excuses that they were traditionally slow starters and this was nothing new and soon their Glamour Boys would move into second gear and compete for the league championship.

Of course, there is some truth that DeMbare have, over the years, been slow starters.

But, even then, they were not a team that would fail to score in three of their first four games, they were not a team that would hide into a shell at Rufaro, of all places, in a match against Highlanders and they were not a team that would go to Ngezi, be beaten, and say it’s business as usual.

The damning reality is that these Glamour Boys find themselves at the cross-roads, trapped in a past where they used to represent greatness in this game in this country, and weighed down by the mediocrity that now fills their ranks with players who, a few years ago, would not even have been allowed to come close to their training ground.

The club’s leadership should also be asking themselves some tough questions rather than hiding behind the excuse that things will get better.

Finishing second last season provided them with the comfort that things could get better but it was clear, to many seasoned observers, that those Glamour Boys punched above their weight and such things don’t happen every year.

The days when it was every footballer’s dream in Harare, Kadoma, Gweru or Masvingo to play for Dynamos, as a fulfilment of a dream, are long gone by and, in fact, a number of footballers now realise that their welfare will be better served elsewhere.

Now, look at the kind of players they attract — either their sides have been relegated or they have been deemed excess baggage by the teams they used to play for.

One only needs to look at the players who have helped the team that is top of the table right now, Ngezi Platinum, to see the damning reality that there are many who now feel that their lives are better off when they play for other teams rather than DeMbare.

This has now left the Harare giants scrambling for crumbs, the kind of players who would ordinarily not be good enough to make their side, and there are many of them in their ranks right now.

The club’s leaders, too, have not helped matters with their questionable leadership style, which belongs to the Stone Age, where they believe things will just work out — simply because they are Dynamos — when their rivals are investing a fortune in modernising their teams.

How do they explain that they are having challenges with paying their West African star when FC Platinum and CAPS United, who also have players from that part of the continent, don’t have similar problems with their men?

The Ngezi Platinum Stars players undergo medicals at the beginning of the season while at Dynamos they now undergo trials.

The Ngezi Platinum Stars players now have a nutritionist, who doesn’t only recommend the kind of food which the players should take for them to perform well, but always monitors their weight and other fitness issues.

At Dynamos, they only meet for about two hours, four days a week, at a run-down ground that appears to be a training facility for Seke High School than the country’s biggest football side, doing the same drills they do week in and week out.

They run, they puff, they sweat — and that’s all.

Nothing about looking closely at the opposition, their strengths, their weakness, stuff like that which has become part of modern day football and on Saturday and Sunday, they run onto the pitch hoping to deliver for their millions of fans.

They have become a classic example of what Shakespeare would have called, “a walking shadow, a poor clone of Glamour Boys who are strutting and fretting their hour-and-half upon the stage and are then heard no more, a tale told by a fool, full of sound and fury, but ultimately signifying nothing.’’ The Herald