Zimbabwe: The Mashonaland Knockout Competitions

Mr Iain Campbell is the ex-head, Lilfordia Primary School

During the late sixties and early seventies the name given to this exercise was somewhat misleading in that participation was restricted to urban schools, but 1972 saw the admission of the first rural contender and Lilfordia reached the final, which they lost to Highlands. After this, presumably because the erstwhile organiser was transferred elsewhere, the competition lapsed.

Eventually, in 1985, at the urging of ZCU representative Mr Dave Levy, Lilfordia agreed to resuscitate the knockout competition in order to enable schools which did not normally meet within the parameters of their own traditional fixture lists ton confront one another and in the hope that this sort of cross-pollination would assist in raising the standards of those which had fallen back in this respect. Initially all entrants' names were placed in a hat, but this type of draw resulted in some inordinately long journeys having to be undertaken, so a form of geographical zoning in the initial stages was introduced, as well as a rough seeding system to try to ensure that the better teams would progress to the later rounds and thereby render these meaningful.

By 1999, however, schools representatives had grown tired of facing the same old opposition year after year and voted to return to the initial format. This has, unfortunately, turned out to be less than satisfactory; to the original objection to lengthy journeys could now be added the irritation of undertaking these only to encounter sub-standard opposition and, in some instances, hazardous playing conditions. For these reasons the organiser has decided:

a) that from next year the competition will be divided into A and B pools to try to obviate the occurrence of totally one-sided encounters; b) that some type of seeding will be attempted; c) that geographical situations will again be taken into consideration.

He has also reached the conclusion that the numerically large schools, in addition to enjoying one obvious advantage in this respect, are further advantaged by the fact that they have greater numbers of over-aged boys, who are currently eligible to play, and he will be contemplating steps to address this problem as well.

For the record, the results of the finals in the First XI section since its reactivation have been as follows:

1985 St John's beat Ruzawi

1986 Lilfordia beat Banket

1987 Hartmann House beat St John's

1988 Bryden beat Lilfordia

1989 Ruzawi beat Lilfordia

1990 Lilfordia beat St John's

1991 St John's beat Lilfordia

1992 Lilfordia beat Bryden

1993 St John's beat Lilfordia

1994 St John's beat Eaglesvale

1995 Lilfordia beat Hartmann House

1996 St John's beat Barwick

1997 St John's beat Eaglesvale

1998 Barwick beat Chitungwiza

1999 St John's beat Springvale

A Colts (Under-11) competition was inaugurated in 1987 but the statistics for this have been rather more difficult to unravel and a full list of finals results is as yet incomplete. From what is to hand, however, it is easy to see that this section has been dominated in the main by St John's (because of their large numbers) and Lilfordia (because their pupils begin to play at an earlier age than most).