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Fungai Muderere, Senior Sports Reporter

FAILURE to pay players’ salaries by ambitious Castle Lager Premier Soccer League side Bulawayo Chiefs, has seen them losing Moors World of Sport (MWOS) as kit sponsors.

From last year, MWOS were supposed to be Amakhosi Amahle’s principal kit sponsor for 12 months with an option to extend the deal in future with their logo enjoying space on the front of the Chiefs shirt. 

Through their understanding, the two partners agreed on a 2022 home, away, third kit and that of Bulawayo Chiefs’ women’s side.

“Basically, we did a lot of sponsorship packages with Bulawayo Chiefs, at a time when we branded their kit, we bought them a whole lot of replicas. At the time when we bought those replicas, we thought of partnering with them as one of the clubs in the Premier Soccer League. We just thought it’s something we would love to have and we partnered them as their kit sponsor. That involved, sponsoring their main men’s team kit, their women’s kit and giving them whole replica wear so that they could use it to generate income. That was for last season,” said MWOS managing director Richard Moors.

The first agreement was to see the team get assistance for the 2022 season through their Amakhosi Wear brand and through this arrangement, Chiefs were guaranteed new kits for each season.

Moors has said due to negative publicity as a result of the club’s failure to pay players, they do not wish to be associated with the Twitter Kings going forward. Chiefs players had a miserable festive season with nothing to show for winning the Chibuku Super Cup, the first piece of silverware for Amakhosi Amahle as well as finishing seventh in the league.

Bulawayo Chiefs

Chiefs players expressed their frustration by leaving banners at the Chiefs shop with messages venting out their anger. 

“It becomes very difficult to associate ourselves with the club as kit sponsors given what happened last season and as such we haven’t been able to extend the sponsorship. We need to be honest with you, we don’t want to be associated with something that is going to bring disrepute to our name. It is a difficult situation but that is what we have decided to do with Chiefs. We have decided to put those resources to our own grassroots team,’’ Moors said.

Efforts to get a comment from Thulani “Javas” Sibanda, the Chiefs media officer were fruitless as he was not answering his mobile phone or respond to WhatsApp messages. 

Chiefs had over the years won a lot of admiration for their use of social media, in particular Twitter where they are the only Zimbabwean football club with a verified handle to promote their brand which saw them attract corporates like MWOS. — @FungaiMuderere