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Sikhumbuzo Moyo

DURING preparations for the first ever combined Zimbabwe National Youth Games in 2017 held in Hwange that had virtually all provinces competing at the same time, former Minister of Youth, Sport, Arts and Recreation Makhosini Hlongwane constantly used to remind the organising committee about one thing.

Everytime he addressed them, he would not end his speech without reminding or telling the organisers that “the devil is in the detail.” That little detail that we fail to grasp might lead to a huge and monumental embarrassment when the big day that we spent so much time preparing for finally comes.

“You might be preparing for a wedding and you are all worried about where those important relatives will sit, who will eat from which tent or what time or things like that and then forget that little detail like the Master of Ceremony for the function, even checking if your public address system is functioning properly or the source of power for the PA system and when the day comes, you suddenly realise you don’t have the MC, you don’t have the disco machine. So it’s critical to remember those so called little things and even cross check,” he would say.

The nation was on Thursday evening embarrassed when our national football team fell to its lowest ebb after the Warriors were shocked by minnows Somalia in a World Cup preliminary round first leg encounter, going down 0-1 in Djibouti.

In political terms, this is treason. In a war situation, the generals would have failed to lead the troops, they would have made a serious error of judgment leading to the massive deaths of soldiers.

This fixture was not announced this week, for starters.

In late July this year, on the 29th to be exact, this fixture was announced along with all other preliminary round qualifiers. Our football custodians, Zifa, had exactly 38 days to plan and prepare for this encounter but as has been manifested, they probably took things for granted and failed to check and cross check a few little details.

The Warriors travelled in batches, not only that, they did not have any training prior to the match but just met at some hotel and went straight to the field. I mean even my social team, Amavevane, has far better preparations than this. Even the whipping boys of our Golden Oldies Social League Izinsizwa and Maranatha have far better preparations than what happened to our Warriors leading to this trip and match of shame.

So to Zifa, let this be a painful lesson never to be repeated again, just know that the devil is in the detail. Nothing is left to chance when planning.