WELCOME HOME KHAMA BILLIAT

KHAMA Billiat’s return to play in the domestic Premiership has been the biggest story in our football in the past two weeks.

When Zimpapers Sport first broke the exclusive story, many dismissed it as a hoax and claimed there was no grain of truth in the report.

These people said there was no way a footballer of Billiat’s profile could return and play in the local PSL, which has lost a significant chunk of the glamour which it had in the past.

Admittedly, the domestic PSL is not the league that it was in the ‘90s and in the first decade of the new millennium.

Back then, our top-flight league was so competitive that it could even produce a club, Dynamos, which was good enough to play in the final of the CAF Champions League.

Three years earlier, Blackpool, only playing in the Premier League for a second year, blazed a trail and reached the semi-finals of the CAF Cup Winners Cup.

Right now, our clubs struggle to even lift themselves out of the group stages of the Champions League with CAPS United, who did it in 2017, the last club to do so.

Now, we even have clubs deciding against playing in the two CAF inter-club tournaments because of the prohibitive costs which are involved in the exercise.

The fans, who used to fill our stadiums during the golden era of our top-flight league, have deserted the clubs they used to follow religiously.

In fact, it was so embarrassing last year that Division One side Chegutu Pirates were attracting more fans to their home matches at Pfupajena than the majority of our PSL clubs.

Because of all this, there was no doubt that our top-flight league badly needed something exciting to provoke interest among the fans to come back to the stadiums.

This is the role that star players like Khama Billiat have and his return to the domestic Premiership has already provided the league with a rallying point when it comes to provoking that interest. We have already seen people, who said they were no longer interested in our local league, commenting on Billiat’s return and that, in itself, is indicative of the power of the athlete.

While the focus right now has been on the choice that he made, in terms of the club he chose to join and those he snubbed, we believe that what is important is that he is back in the local league.

It’s been 15 years since Billiat last played in the league in 2009 when he had a cameo role at CAPS United.

He was still a young player, without any experience, and now and again he was booed by the Green Machine players who felt that he wasn’t adding any value to their team.

Of course, he later proved all the boo boys wrong with his performances in South Africa.

We don’t care who Billiat plays for, it’s his choice, what matters to us is that he is back home and that is huge for our league.