Run the rule over sport leadership candidates

QUITE a few disciplines in local sport are due to hold elections over the next few weeks and some of these elections will usher in new and unknown faces while others will bring back familiar and old faces.

QUITE a few disciplines in local sport are due to hold elections over the next few weeks and some of these elections will usher in new and unknown faces while others will bring back familiar and old faces.

Different people have different reasons for seeking office, but essentially holding office is all about serving the people in a particular sporting discipline.

However, now and then it has become apparent that not all those who seek to, and obtain the right to hold office are not imbued with the spirit of service, but a desire to fulfill their own ulterior motives, manly financial gain.

Given this background, is it not time that there was some form of test or check as to the fitness of individuals vying for positions in terms of each’s suitability to hold office.

This suggestion comes out of a desire to have sporting disciplines run by the right people, in every sense of the word. Of particular interest would be the financial and managerial capacity of each candidate.

Cricket and football in particular have gone through very difficult times of recent and questions have been raised on the ability and suitability of some of the leaders in these disciplines.

Other disciplines whose fortunes have declined in recent years include wrestling and boxing, athletics, swimming and tennis.

Most of what led to the demise of these disciplines has been poor leadership of one nature or another. Even at club level there has been a dearth of leadership which has culminated in the collapse of clubs and sports institutions.

In England the relevant authorities conduct a “fit person” test when an individual or company wants to buy a controlling interest (stake) in a football club.

Sports authorities, for the future good and wellbeing of the sport, should surely look at the English template and take whatever is applicable and appropriate to Zimbabwe — something along the Leadership Code that was once mooted by the political leaders of this country in the mid-80s.

With such a template people who are or have been financially insolvent, for example, would be barred from running for office.

People that have been convicted of certain crimes, especially those found guilty of crimes related to trustworthiness, especially lack thereof, or even drunkards and wife bashers would also not be allowed to hold public office in sport.

This is a humble suggestion, in the spirit of bringing some best practice corporate governance to our sport.

If, for example, an individual who is insolvent is elected into office it is surely very difficult — if not impossible — to stop such a person once in office to be corrupt or even dip their sticky fingers in the cookie jar!

Such a qualification would help clean our sport by keeping away from possibly holding office undesirable elements, people who take office to advance their personal agendas, most of these agendas not being related, even remotely, with the discipline in which they are holding office.

The tenures of such individuals bring untold harm to the discipline and their term of office is characterised by one controversy after another rather than a period of sanity and development of the sport.

  •  It was a very successful weekend for both How Mine and Dynamos in their respective African continental assignments with both notching up very good first leg victories.

How Mine FC beat Chuoni of Zanzibar 4-0 on Saturday while Dynamos overcame Mochudi, from neighbouring Botswana, 3-0 on Sunday in Harare.

Both teams should be able to sail easily into the next rounds of their respective competitions.

Dynamos boast of vast experience in continental sojourns, but How Mine maybe need to be given a hint of some of the non-sporting hurdles likely to be encountered on the African safari.

  • Among these is the issue of diet and this brings to mind the now defunct Gweru United FC participating in the scrapped African Cup Winners Cup tournament against Kampala City Council (KCC), who I believe are also history now, in the late ’80s.

While in Uganda the Gweru United FC players were “enticed” to taste a local East African delicacy, matoke, a dish in which the banana is the main component.

Unfortunately this dish it makes one very thirsty, just like honey from the beehive.

After taking a pretty good amount of this diet a few hours before their match, Gweru United players were running all over the show for water and of course, most of them had running stomachs during the match, much to the advantage of KCC!

  • There are even other tactics host teams use and these include dirt ones like housing the visiting team in hotels that have a nightclub that runs all night through before the match.

Music is played at the highest volume possible or flooding the foyer of the hotel where the visiting team is staying with attractive ladies of the night and asking them to deliberately attract the attention of the visiting players.

Micky Poole, wherever he is today, has a very vivid recollection of this when the Zimbabwe national team was on an assignment in West Africa.