Four relegated clubs take Zifa to court

THE four relegated clubs from the Premier Soccer League - Kiglon, Zimbabwe Saints, Masvingo United and Shooting Starts - have engaged lawyers to handle their case following Zifa's alleged failure to act on a petition that was sent to them.

In an interview yesterday, Kiglon chief executive Thompson Dondo said they had engaged their lawyers because they had not heard anything from the football body.

"We have decided to take the matter to the courts because we have not received a response from Zifa or the PSL. Since we sent the petition they have been quiet so we have sent the issue to our lawyers," he said.

Dondo said their lawyers, whom he declined to name, had said they had a case as they believed that their relegation was unfair.

The teams signed a petition against their relegation following Zifa's decision to make use of foreign referees for the Mbada Diamonds Cup semi-finals and final.

They believe that if Zifa had no faith in their referees then their relegation was not justified because they worked with the same referees for about 10 months and Zifa could not trust them with four matches.

"What we are saying is that if they do not have faith in their own referees then why should we be relegated. We will go to court to have the matter clarified. We have given them up to Tuesday next week to respond. Hopefully by then they would have responded," said Dondo.

Zifa communications manager Nicky Moyo-Dhlamini said they had seen the letter.

"The letter was on our desk but I was not aware that they had given us up to Tuesday to respond," she said.

Castle Lager PSL chief executive officer Kennedy Ndebele said they had not received anything from the teams.

"The letter was directed to Zifa and we have not received anything. What we got was the petition only so I am not aware that they are taking them to court," he said.

Part of the petition read:
"The just-ended 2011 season was the most difficult one for us as the PSL relegated clubs. We are happy though to say that all clubs managed to fulfill all their fixtures despite the extremely difficult conditions that we were playing under.

"There was a lot of match-fixing and in the process serious violations of the rules of the game.

"The Zifa president's directive that the Mbada semi-final games and the final be handled by foreign referees was a clear vote of no confidence to our local referees. Everyone involved in football today including the fans said thumbs up to the noble idea.

"To us the idea made sense and those who watched the semi-final games will agree with us that there was fair play. If we had these foreign referees coming to take charge of local games every week, we definitely would be having a different scenario today.

"Yes, the loser is always at fault but we must point out that if the Zifa board does not have confidence in the local referees then how do they trust the same referees to handle the league games?

"It follows to say that our small little teams without deep pockets were obviously affected badly. We lost dismally. We failed on most of the games to pay up. The sad part is that besides having to pay up for extra protection from the referees we also were supposed to pay the normal match fees to the same panel of officials. It became very difficult to keep on paying and for us who clearly failed, we lost a lot of games and in the end we found ourselves relegated.

"The system is too susceptible to influence, too corrupt, too fundamentally lacking in transparency".

The petition came about after a number of referees were fingered in match-fixing scandals which were triggered by allegations of biased officiating.

A committee was tasked to investigate the allegations of match-fixing with one of the matches that could be under the spotlight being the Zimbabwe Saints-Motor Action match.

A number of officials have since been fingered for their role in the match-fixing scandal.