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Dingilizwe Ntuli
THERE is no doubt that Zimbabwean sport is presently at a low ebb, and has been for some years. There has been a huge performance slump at international level with most national teams in decline.

Football has suffered from years of decay with greedy officials tainting the national game with their equally discredited images.

Cricket is battling for survival and the national team is a shadow of the sides that saw most kids briefly abandoning street football to take up street cricket in the dusty roads of our towns’ sprawling suburbs.

Rugby and tennis could become extinct if not salvaged immediately. The number of administrators and hangers on in these sports associations has increased incredibly, but results have been rapidly dropping. As a result, the focus has wrongly been on administrators instead of the athletes.

Rugby is particularly struggling and it was sad to hear Bulawayo development coach George Mukorera painting a bleak outlook of the game in the province.

Mukorera indicated that rugby in Bulawayo was in trouble and things are so grim that players from the city’s clubs all failed to make the national team grade.

He cited an increasing lack of activity in club rugby as hastening the decline in interest for the game after the Zimbabwe Rugby Union (ZRU) disbanded the national league due to lack of funding.

It’s shocking that ZRU is not alarmed by the failure of Bulawayo players to make it into the national team. After all, it is ZRU that discontinued the national league and advised the Bulawayo clubs, Busters, Old Miltonians, Western Panthers and Bulldogs to organise a regional league with teams from the Midlands without any form of financial assistance.

That the Mat-Midlands League has failed to take off due to funding problems does not seem to bother ZRU is cause for concern.

It’s scandalous for a national association to allow sport to die in one region and then select players from one region and term that a national team? What is ZRU president John Falkenberg and his executive doing to ensure the game is played in most parts of the country so that a truly representative side is selected for national duty?

ZRU has depressingly played a huge role in hastening the decline in interest for rugby by winking at the precarious state of the game in Bulawayo.

Yes, the Harare league is thriving because teams there have managed to source sponsorship, but that’s not a reason for adopting a one size fits all model. Economic conditions in the two provinces are very different and ZRU’s stance of doing nothing could prove to be a fatal blow for rugby in Bulawayo.

The city last hosted an international rugby match in 2011 when the Sables played Uganda at Hartsfield Ground. With no club matches being played, the passion for rugby is fast fading and ZRU will find it difficult to attract a sizeable crowd when they decide to bring the Sables to Bulawayo.

Due to the inaction, Hartsfield Rugby Ground is also fast deteriorating and has now been turned into a concert venue. It’s now known more for weekend braais than for staging rugby matches because no games are played there.

Rugby is thriving at school level and infrastructure is incredibly strong, but that talent will all go to waste if there continues to be no active league.

Hopefully ZRU will act promptly to revive rugby in Bulawayo or the decline will be terminal. Schools are churning out a number of good talented rugby players, but they need to be complemented by ZRU through the revival of a competitive national league.

Right now ZRU is undoing efforts to develop rugby at grassroots level in Bulawayo as pupils see no reason taking up the sport without any hope further pursuing it after they leave secondary school unless they join the great trek to Harare or South Africa.