20 Feb 2017

Mochudi Centre Chiefs coach, Bongani Mafu could not hide his pleasure at having veteran striker, Jerome Ramatlhakwane in his team after the beefy frontman slotted the only goal of the game to give Magosi maximum points against BDF XI on Sunday.

In a post-match interview at the Molepolole Sports Complex, Mafu said that ever since he joined Chiefs, he had never hidden his admiration and need for the former Zebras hit man.

“I have always insisted that I need JJ in my team, but he was held up wherever he was for a long time and we could not use him for the better part of the beginning of the season, and now that he is back your can see why I wanted him,” grinned the former French educator.

Mafu however, quickly pointed out that the presence of Ramatlhakwane was not all the remedy that his team needed to return to its glory days, saying that they still had more work to do as the technical team to ensure the team starts competing.

He said one of the issues that continue to drag their performance downhill was failure to get all his players for training sessions, which makes preparations for games difficult.

“I am not a cry baby, but we all know that there are a lot of things happening behind the scenes at Chiefs that I would not like to dwell much on. Had we prepared well this week I believe we could have won the game by an even wider margin,” he said. Mafu’s comments came in the wake of reports that most of his players boycotted training the whole of last week because of lack of salary payment.

He said that from now on their aim was to take each game as it comes to try and crawl up the log standings as much as they can. Chiefs displayed a much improved game compared to the beginning of the season, and Ramatlhakwane slotted home the winner after rounding off BDF XI goalkeeper, Basimanebotlhe Moilwa on the 16th minute after a well-placed through pass from Dirang Moloi.

BDF XI tried their best to find a goal, but on each occasion they had a chance they could not beat the brilliance of Siamisang Kgosipula on Chiefs goals.
Kgosipula went on to win the Man of the Match award with his display.

After the game, BDF XI gaffer, Louis Setshwane was not a happy man as he said they were beaten by a team that did not play that well.

“The problem was that we couldn’t think, we were not clicking at all at it is hurting to be beaten by a team that displayed such a performance. They did not rally outperform us and had we used our heads we could have even won,” he said.

Setshwane said now their focus would be on preparing for their Macom Top 8 game against the highflying Galaxy FC this weekend. BOPA