Byo City Council endorses Cosafa

THE Bulawayo City Council has given its nod to a request by Zifa to stage the 2017 Council for Southern Africa Football Associations (Cosafa) Women’s Championship where eight countries will battle it out over a three-week period.

The championships, making their first return since 2011 when Zimbabwe again played host to the games, will be held from August to September and Bulawayo’s three stadia, Barbourfields, Luveve and White City have been identified as venues for the tournament.

According to the latest council minutes, a Zifa delegation visited the city on April 21 and held a meeting with the town clerk and senior management where it was resolved that Bulawayo would host the tournament.

“The tournament shall be held over a three-week period and eight countries from the Southern Africa Development Committee (Sadc) shall take part. The facilities needed were Barbourfields, Luveve and White City stadia. Some of the matches shall be held in the evenings at Barbourfields and that would need the use of floodlights for which they (Cosafa) were prepared to pay. The usual Council hire charges for the stadia shall apply and they shall also pay for that.

“The Department of Housing and Community Services shall furnish them with the hire charges as well as the electricity costs for the evening use of Barbourfields Stadium. The delegation had also requested to incorporate the Director of Housing and Community Services into their Local Organising Committee (LOC). It was felt that such an event would be good for marketing the city as well as promoting business and tourism in the city and there was no objection to council granting Zifa authority to use its stadia for this tournament and that in future such requests be left to the town clerk to deal with administratively,” read the council minutes.

The Cosafa Women’s Championships were inaugurated in 2002 with Zimbabwe playing host to the edition that saw them losing 1-2 to South Africa, who went on to win the second and third editions of the tournament. South Africa beat Namibia 3-1 in the final hosted by Zambia in 2006 and in 2008 they beat hosts Angola by the same score line before surrendering the trophy to Zimbabwe in 2011 during which Mighty Warriors’ striker Rufaro Machingura emerged as top goal scorer with eight goals. — @skhumoyo2000