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Ricky Zililo, Senior Sports Reporter
AS the custodians of domestic football, Zifa councillors head into the final week ahead of a landmark extraordinary general meeting (EGM) in which they must look at the bigger picture and save the game from its current downward spiral.

Fed up with inefficiencies of administrators that have taken local football down the garden path, Zifa councillors seem to have awoken from their slumber by seeking to take the suspended national association’s executive committee to task.

The extraordinary meeting set for Saturday in Harare is likely to result in Zifa president Felton Kamambo, board members Philemon Machana, Bryton Malandule, Stanley Chapeta, Sugar Chagonda, Barbra Chikosi and Farai Jere’s mandate being revoked.

The suspended board members have been invited to the meeting to answer to a litany of charges, which include alleged misappropriation of Covid-19 football funds, failure to manage stakeholder relations, igniting endless fights with the Sports and Recreation Commission and mishandling sexual harassment allegations against a board member, among others.

The Zifa councillors have basically cast the die and challenged the suspended board to show cause why its mandate mustn’t be revoked.

The councillors must be resolute, firm, united and use the congress as a chance for the common cause of saving local football.

They need to stand for football and prove that they can’t be hoodwinked for 30 pieces of silver, while football continues to suffer.

That the suspended board deliberately decided to renege on what the Zifa congress agreed on in terms of distributing Covid-19 funds such as payment of referees’ fees and Covid-19 tests for all teams, among other items, shows that they were never sincere in football resumption.

The board clearly didn’t see value in resuming football during Covid-19 when it had received in excess of US$1,5 million from Fifa and Caf as Covid-19 relief funds.

It’s a fact that Black Rhinos, who lost to Mamelodi Sundowns in the final of the Caf Women’s Champions League Cosafa qualifiers without playing local league games in two years, could have done better had the local women’s league used the relief funds wisely.

The decline of women’s football is so sad considering that in 2016, the Mighty Warriors and Banyana Banyana were the only two African countries at the Olympic Games in Brazil and seven years later, the world seems to have forgotten about the Mighty Warriors.

Nothing has been happening in terms of junior development and one wonders where the next generation of stars will come from.

Everything is stagnant, even coaches are failing to capacitate themselves, while countries like Zambia continue holding Caf coaching clinics. The last time Zimbabwe held a Caf course was in 2017.

So, is it wrong for the councillors to take to task the board that they voted in to come and clarify issues raised?

What is it that the Zifa board fears if it feels it has done extremely well to develop the game?

To councillors, as the week progresses, don’t be intimidated, don’t let flimsy allegations bordering on power struggles divide your focus on the ultimate goal, which is to save local football.

Stick to the agenda that you circulated. – @ZililoR