HIGHLANDERS supporters had by Thursday raised more than $500 in anticipation of the financial sanction the Premier Soccer League disciplinary committee will mete on the team following the abandonment of the league game against Dynamos at Barbourfields Stadium last Sunday.
BY FORTUNE MBELE
Highlanders’ chief executive officer, Nhlanhla Dube confirmed that after establishing the crowd funding initiative, supporters were informed how they could deposit money into the club’s coffers.
Highlanders have been charged for flouting order 31 of the PSL rules and regulations, causing the abandonment of a match due to crowd trouble and will be appearing before the disciplinary committee on Tuesday.
“The fans have contributed just over $500. Let me hasten to say that the people that are getting in contact with the club are not only in Zimbabwe. It’s amazing; we are getting contacts from the traditional Diaspora, your UK, Australia, South Africa, the US and we are getting interesting calls from people in Rwanda that are Bosso fans. I spoke to people that are in Somalia. I spoke to people that are organising themselves in Mogadishu,” Dube said.
Due to the response by the Bosso fans, the Highlanders leadership have seen an opportunity to take advantage of the initiative to reach out to its multitude of supporters, locally and abroad.
“This is an opportunity for the club to also reach out to its fans after the initiative. Remember, this initiative is not administrative, it’s a fan initiative. Its fans, who came together and said this is what we want to do.
“It has opened up a new avenue. It has shown us that the Highlanders fans are not only passionate and excited but they are also disposed across the various ends of the continent and what it says is that the brand Highlanders actually has a footprint in every continent on earth. We can start to speak of ourselves as an international billboard for the corporate world for various marketing channels,” Dube said.
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Notwithstanding the outcome of the hearing on Tuesday, funds started pouring in by the start of the week following the Sunday fiasco.
“The hearing is next week. We have been approached by fans, who have said they want to contribute to the fines that might be paid, that maybe charged or placed on the club after the hearing has been done. We do not know what the outcome is going be; certainly, we don’t want to pre-judge the process. We have circulated various options for them to contribute; we have sent out our bank and EcoCash biller code details so that it is officially authentic. At the end of all this, we are going to calculate and add up everything and post a list of all those who would have contributed,” Dube said.
