03 Dec 2023

When former premier league giants, Mochudi Centre and Extension Gunners met under floodlights at the National stadium on Saturday, their supporters were expecting a closely contested First Division South League encounter.

Many were astonished as Chiefs walked away with a wide 4-1 winning margin, and the difference in the score line could be attributed chiefly to two errors by Gunners goalkeeper, Ofentse Tauyatswala rather than poor play.

However, Gunners assistant coach Stanley Mwanga instead pointed fingers at their usual challenges.

Mwanga indicated that their poor performance was due to lack of proper training.

“This was one of the few games that we did not play well in defence, but if you looked at the whole team, physically we were not there. We did not train well this week as we only had two days of training, and in two days there is nothing much you can do,” he said.

Mwanga would however not be drawn into reasons for missing training, instead calling it an ‘administrative issue’.

“I cannot go much into that, I am a technical person and I can only talk about technical things,” he said.

He said that all the four goals they conceded were really schoolboy errors emanating from poor defending.

Concerning the performance of his first choice goalkeeper, Mwanga said he was not feeling well.

“The medical team did not tell us that he was not feeling well, only to realise later that he was feeling dizzy and all that. Otherwise we could have long substituted him or not played him at all,” he said.

He said that he only realised that something was wrong with him when he missed easy pickings.

Concerning the general play, Mwaanga said they were not that bad as they managed to move forward as team.

He said that his team produced numerous crosses, which they failed to even attempt to score.

The assistant coach promised Mapantsula faithfuls that they will work on the problem and do better in the coming games.

For his part, they visibly ecstatic Chiefs gaffer, Oupa Kowa said that he was happy to have corrected his team’s defensive lapses.

In the past games, Chiefs had a tendency of scoring first only to let the lead slip in the second half.

A typical example being their previous game against Notwane, where they led 3-0 at halftime, only to allow Notwane a 3-3 comeback in the second half.

“Our main task this time around was to make sure that players lasted the whole 90 minutes, and I am happy we smoothly did that,” he said.

Such as Mwaanga, Kowa also revealed that they also had some internal problems as a team, although he said they did not allow such to affect their performance on the field.

“On Wednesday we decided to forfeit our training and instead, sat down as a team to discuss these issues. We told the players as the technical team that we could not continue not training because of the off-the-field issues they were aware of, and am happy that our talk produced this result,” he said.

He also said that they always tried to go into their next game with a positive mind regardless of the past result.

Kowa also appealed to Magosi supporters to always come in large numbers and rally behind the team like they did on Saturday.

In other First Division South  games, Desert Nxau are still on the hunt for their first win of the season.

The Tsabong based outfit played to a 1-1 draw against City Polar.

Black Forest were held to a 2-2 draw by Mogoditshane Fighters in their own backyard while Jwaneng Young Stars beat UB Hawks 1-0 at the Galaxy Stadium to maintain their lead. ENDS