The hawker that discovered ZPC Kariba’s defensive rock

TRAGEDY MUTYANDA has a funny name.

Perhaps he could have been equally if not more popular than Have-A-Look Dube, Salad Twaliki or Friday Phiri had he been a football personality.

But the tragedy, like his name, is that he is largely an unknown quantity in the wider soccer trenches across the country.

He is however, popular in Karoi where he butters his bread from selling plastic packaging to fruit and vegetable vendors.

It is in this town that Mutyanda founded a social football team which he named “MaPlastics FC” back in 2010.

Using his meagre earnings from the hawking business, Mutyanda would recruit teenage boys with the slightest potential into his team.

“I mostly taught them the essence of hard work on and off the field of play,” said Mutyanda.

“I had no coaching qualification, but I was being driven by a desire to just see young players making it big.

“That’s how I decided to start the project. I was funding everything from my own pocket. The team enjoyed a lot of success in the social league we were playing in given that we had young players who I was giving incentives.”

Until 2012, Mutyanda had a regular customer in vegetable vendor Asiyatu Bello who he didn’t know had a football-loving son by the name Boid Mutukure.

“One day as I was delivering plastics to his mother, I saw Boid (Mutukure).

“He was young with a big frame and I asked whose son he was to which the mother responded.

“Instantly, I asked to take him to my team. Boid was already a footballer playing at Chikangwe Secondary School...”

Then the journey began. MaPlastics FC became a household name in

Karoi with most of their players snatched by tobacco processing companies’ teams.

“We built a very strong team and even affiliated in Division 3.

“We had very good players most of who were then poached by other clubs who baited them with jobs, especially tobacco processing companies in and around Karoi,” he said.

“Once at the job, some of the players decided to concentrate with work rather than balancing it up with the game.

“I am obviously happy that most of the players I had at MaPlastics FC ended up getting jobs thus lessening delinquency in the streets.”

While some joined different companies, Mutukure decided to keep his eyes on the ball.

“I was mostly inspired by the fact that I started playing for the first team at school when I was in Form 2 at Chikangwe High.

“When I joined MaPlastics FC, I was the youngest player in the squad. The owner (Mutyanda) had no money, but he had a passion for the game,” said Mutukure.

“As players we could contribute to top up his earnings from his plastic selling business so that we could travel to away matches.

“The desire to do well and grow into good players and good human beings drove us as young players.

“Sometimes things got tough and we would walk for more than 10km to play away games.

“As the project grew, others joined some better Division 2 clubs while others got employed by different tobacco oriented companies around Karoi.”

Mutukure,who once captained an allstar Mashonaland West team which had players like Terrence Dzvukamanja, Edgar Chigiji, Kudzi Nyakasaka and Terrence Chiku in the national youth games, was also nearly snatched by a tobacco team but he refused.

◆ Continued on www.herald.co.zw