Rambuda Young Fighters plead for forgiveness

“We are very sorry. It was not our intention to bring the good name of the tournament into disrepute. We promise that it will never happen again.” These were the words from the managing director of Rambuda Young Fighters, Mr Petrus Chauke.

He was making a humble plea for his soccer team to be readmitted unconditionally to this year’s Ramzas Soccer Tournament, after they disrupted one of their games last year.

After a lengthy meeting with the tournament’s organizing committee at Makonde Shopping Complex last week, Chauke’s plea was finally accepted unconditionally. This means that Rambuda Young Fighters are one of the teams that will participate in the tournament this year.

Chauke said they had a consultative meeting with his teams’ stakeholders and they agreed to seek forgiveness by meeting with the tournament’s organizing committee. “We felt that not participating in this big tournament would be a terrible blow for our players, supporters and sports lovers. We are happy that our apology has been accepted and we are going to be ambassadors to warn other teams to conduct themselves professionally at all times.”

The tournament’s competition manager, Mr Ntshengedzeni Mbedzi, said that the management of Rambuda Young Fighters had done the honourable thing by swallowing their pride and asking for forgiveness. He said the tournament was not about punishing offenders but about nurturing young talent and keeping the youth from the streets.

 “We respect this team for their honesty, because they presented their matter before us with truthfulness. To err is human and we all make mistakes. We felt it would be unfortunate for us not to accept their humble plea, because we would be disadvantaging young people who might end up being the future stars of our national team. However, we caution that any teams that disrupt games in this tournament will be subjected to the strongest disciplinary action.”

Mbedzi further reminded teams to affiliate for this year’s competition as there are few spaces left. “We are targeting 32 teams, and within a week of opening the affiliation, we already had more than 20 teams that have affiliated. We urge those who have not affiliated to do so as a matter of urgency as we will not expand beyond 32 teams after our closing date next Tuesday (20 November).

Date:18 November 2017

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