SYDNEY NCUBE

ZVISHAVANE – Shabanie Football Club, yesteryear’s premier league sensation will return to competitive football playing in Central Region Division 1 in 2023, the club chairman Elias Marufu has told The Mirror.
He assured the team’s legion of supporters in Zvishavane that the team has not collapsed.
Shabanie which shook the premier league between 2001 and 2017 dropped out of competitions when the season began mid-February this year after it failed to raise affiliation fees.

The season is now midway through and the league is currently in the mid-season break.
“We may have failed to pay our affiliation fees but that doesn’t mean we are completely out.
We are preparing hard for next year and we will come back with a big bang. We have academy players that we are grooming and these are going to beef up our team come next year. We are known for playing entertaining football and that will be back next year. We have no definite sponsor currently and the team is depending on well-wishers “, he said.

Central Region Division 1 League is this year running on 14 teams instead of 16 after Shabanie, Blanket Mine and Ivan Hoe dropped out because of the problem of affiliation fees.
“We have been assured that our place in the league will still be there when we come back next year. In any case there is already a shortage of teams in the league,” said Marufu.
Shesham is currently on top of the log with 35 points out of 15 games and on second and third place are TelOne FC and Vumbachikwe respectictively with 30 points and 28 points.

Two teams from Zvishavane that is in the Division 1 league are Loss Control FC and FC Platinum under 19s. Shabanie was supposed to be the third team in the Division.
Shabanie is arguably the team of Zvishavane and far more popular in the small mining town. Shabanie home ground Maglass suffers dereliction as a result of its absence from competitive soccer.https://masvingomirror.com/