FROM Tuesday to Friday every week three different football teams use Sakubva Stadium in Mutare for training with the first team using the facility from 8am to 10am while the next one is on the field of play from 10am to around 1pm.
The last team of the day to use the facility for training from 2pm to 5pm.
During some Fridays, Eastern Region Division One teams and women football teams take turns to use Sakubva as their home ground for league matches. Saturday and Sunday the stadium is then reserved for competitive Castle Lager Premiership matches where four teams -- Cranborne Bullets, Black Rhinos, Tenax CS FC and Manica Diamonds -- take turns to host their opponents of the day.
Technically, Monday is the only day of the week when Sakubva has a chance to get meaningful maintenance works simply because no club has a training session nor competitive match scheduled for that day.
This has left Manicaland's ceremonial home of football in a bad state, especially the turf where the lawn has greatly suffered since the resumption of football action early this year after the Covid-19 pandemic length layoff.
Apart from the turf, the half-baked renovations done by the custodians of the facility -- City of Mutare -- did not cover the dugout areas where substitutes and their coaches, medical staff as well as the fourth official sit on chairs in open air. The long-standing VIP section renovations remain a pipeline dream with the shade being the only structure that differentiates the section from the rest of the terraces.
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ZIFA spokesperson, Xolisani Gwesela, who is a member of the national association's First Instance Body, which is responsible for inspecting and homologating match venues across the country, said: "Yes, I have seen very terrible pictures of the Sakubva pitch. It is very clear that the stadium has deteriorated to unacceptable levels. We kindly implore the custodians of the facility, in this case Mutare City Council, to urgently redress the issue and see to it that the facility meets acceptable standards as soon as possible." Repeated efforts to get a comment from City of Mutare since Monday morning were fruitless as the local authority's spokesperson, Spren Mutiwi, kept on saying he was still "trying to reach out to the responsible authorities within council to get finer details".
Mutare City Council had done so well to renovate the facility at their own cost and meet the minimum standards acceptable of a top-flight league match venue around mid-last year.
The construction of the precast wall, the new changing rooms, a boardroom as well as a tunnel from the changing rooms to the pitch were some of the key renovations that the local authority carried out to earn the FIB green-light to have the facility used for domestic top-flight league matches.
