By Anesu Chakanetsa

IN September last year, a headline in a local newspaper brought to the fore the issue of lack of goals in the Premier Soccer League (PSL).
The headline ‘Goal Drought; who is to blame?’ was spot on.
As if in tandem with the 2016 El-Nino-induced drought, the PSL was suffering from a severe goal drought.
In that September, the top scorer, Leonard Tsipa, was standing on a paltry eight goals after more than 20 matches.
At the end of the season, he needed only 11 goals to clinch the Golden Boot Award and the number of goals during the season in all matches was a disappointing 450 at an average of 1.88 goals per match.
But, as if responding to the La-Nina-induced rains that watered the country’s fields and produced a bumper ‘command maize’ harvest, in football, a bumper harvest of goals is also being witnessed in the current campaign.
The contrast is like the two climatic phenomena, El-Nino and La-Nina.
So far this season, the top goal scorer, Bukhosi Sibanda, of the struggling Bulawayo side Bantu Rovers is already on 10 goals and if he continues with this fine run, he could double or treble that figure.
He is followed by two star strikers, Christian Ntouba Epoupa and Prince Dube of Dynamos and Highlanders respectively, who are both on six goals.
These strikers, if they maintain this form, will take us to the old days when strikers banged in dozens of goals.
Rarely would a match end in a nil-all stalemate back in the heyday.
Harare giants CAPS United, despite having to contend with injuries and fatigue, have shown their pedigree in front of goalposts with their 3-1 thumping of Egyptian powerhouse Zamalek, proving their potency.
And Highlanders, the granddads of Zimbabwean football, are regaining their fierce status of the 1980s and 1990s.
Dynamos, the country’s most successful team has suddenly exploded to life after a rather indifferent start to the season and are currently the league’s top scorers.
Elsewhere, moneybags Ngezi Platinum and FC Platinum coaches’ shrewd tactics have seen their sides banging some of the best goals in the PSL.
The current Black Rhinos squad is re-igniting memories of the 1980s when they came from First Division to scoop the PSL Cup.
Ironically, the struggling Bantu Rovers, who sit second from bottom on the log standings, boast training the current league’s top goal scorer, Sibanda.
This is despite the fact that the league began on a very low note.
It was beginning to look like there was no PSL at all.
But the astuteness of the coaches and the precision of strikers has been the tonic the PSL required.
Supersport, the sport broadcaster whose contract with PSL expired last year, renewed it sometime after the league had started due to the thrills being provided by the teams.
The recent COSAFA Cup triumph by the country’s senior men national soccer team, The Warriors, is testimony to the quality we have in the local league.
It has been long since Zimbabwe enjoyed goal-hungry strikers.
For the past nine years, no player has banged more than 23 goals apiece in the PSL.
The last player to do so was the marauding Evans Chikwaikwai who found the net a stunning 23 times for the now defunct Njube Sundowns in 2008.
The following season, Nyasha Mushekwi who played for CAPS United came closer by scoring 21 times.
In 2010, Gunners’ Norman Maroto scored a goal more to total 22.
Between 2011-2016, top scorers have not scored more than 20 goals apiece, with Rodrick Mutuma (Dynamos) scoring 14, Nelson Mazivisa of Shabanie, 18, Tendai Ndoro of Chicken Inn, 18, Knox Mtizwa of Highlanders, 14 and Leonard Tsipa of CAPS United, 11.
Back in the 1980s and 1990s, strikers would score more than 30 goals in one season.
And the combinations were deadly too.
In 1984, the deadly duo of Maronga Nyangela and Jerry Chidawa scored a combined 64 goals for Black Rhinos.
Now Nyangela is assisting Stanford Mtizwa at Black Rhinos, which maybe is also contributing in the goal-scoring season, and gunning for the title like they did in 1984.
Last year, they broke Nothern Region Division goal scoring record.
However, individual brilliance rocked more.
In 1971, the late great Peter ‘Thunder Boots’ Nyama netted 62 goals in all competitions in just one season.
In 1986, Moses Chunga, rated as the best dribbler, netted a mind-boggling 46 league goals.
Chunga was not even the out-and-out striker, giving testimony that goal scoring is not a striker’s preserve.
On the other hand, goal scoring was made possible by creativity in the middle of the park.
Last year, Charles Mabika, a renowned football analyst, sarcastically said Zimbabwe had to wait for new talented strikers to be born in order for the goal drought to end.
But it seems this year, instead of waiting for new babies to be born, the seasoned boys want to do it and not be shamed by future strikers.
Digressing from the PSL, The Warriors are also on a ‘command goal’ harvesting project.
In the past six matches, they have scored more than 20 goals.
And that is between four weeks; with Ovidy Karuru scoring six goals in four matches during the recent COSAFA Cup tourney.
And since the COSAFA Cup tournament started in 1997, Zimbabwe has scored the highest number of goals.
No doubt strikers have come to the party this season!