FADED NENGOMASHA TOSSED AFTER SERVING HIS PURPOSE

WHEN Tinashe Nengomasha joined Kaizer Chiefs in 2002, I was the first person to write about his recruitment by the club.

This because my sports editor at City Press Dominic Chimhavi had first hand information about the transfer.

What happened between then and now is history.

When I heard recently that one of the notable PSL transfer market activities this off-season was Nengomasha’s move away from Naturena to Bidvest Wits, it got me thinking. Is it a good or bad move by the player? Did Chiefs do something to try keep the man in their books?

But I then realised that Nengomasha, like many others before him, is just one statistic of the harsh reality of professional football.

The man known as Washington to some of his fond followers has basically been dumped across town to Braamfontein by a club he dearly served for a decade. It is common knowledge that the Zimbabwean midfield “donkey” is no longer the young man that came to Chiefs and stamped his authority in the middle of the park and helped the club to lift a number of trophies. Among those were two league championships and two Coca Cola Cup titles.

Nengomasha was a central figure in the Chiefs squad that erstwhile club PRO Putco Mafani dubbed “Operation Vat Alles”. There was no stopping “The General” and even one of the club’s most sensational finds of the 21^st Century Collins Mbesuma owes some of his success to the mild-mannered Zimbabwean.

He rarely got sent off. He was always calm and calculated. He would smile at his opponent after being the receiver of a machete-like tackle; pick himself up and dust himself off before launching another attack for his side.

But now he is like an old and slow lion in a pride. He cannot hunt as ferociously as he used to and provide for members of his pride. Young lions he helped breed and taught how to bring down prey have now kicked him out of the inner circle.

History has taught us that someone like him will not survive for a season or two at Wits. He will wilt like a lonely flower in the village and end up in the obscurity of the National First Division or even lower down the football food chain.

Even though I am not fully appraised of the events leading to the transfer, the least the club could have done was persuade their humble servant to retire at Naturena and be slotted into some junior coaching ranks. I believe that Nengomasha is the first to know and should admit that he has no Plan B beyond his playing days. Even swinging the gate open for young lions coming into and departing from training at Naturena would have sufficed, just to keep him going.

He is undoubtedly one of their few, if not only, remaining legends. Not even a testimonial game to thank this battle-scarred king of the PSL jungle for his ten years of selfless service. It sounds morally wrong. But does Chiefs have the obligation to do that?

Let us hope that Nengomasha’s won’t be the case of the hunter becoming the hunted in a few months or years to come.

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