Muhsin Ertugral will be hoping that his team find their feet early on Sunday afternoon when they take on Santos at the Athlone Stadium. It will be warmer in Cape Town that it has been in Johannesburg through the week and the same kind of wet conditions that Chiefs have been training in preparation for the game are not expected to prevail in Cape Town.

Ertugral knows all about Cape Town in heat and cold weather having coached there last season, and will be less concerned with the weather and more importantly his team bringing home three points on Sunday.

Soon after touching down in the mother city Chiefs took a stroll along the beach in Campus Bay, in warm conditions just before sunset as the Amakhosi coach wanted to get his team relaxed ahead of the Santos encounter.

The Chiefs travelling contingent to Cape Town was minus Shaun Bartlett still out with an injury as well as Onismor Bhasera, who misses the game through suspension. In the team though is Tinashe Nengomasha who was out of the AmaZulu game due to a suspension, with Ertugral expecting a match that will be very demanding on his players Nengomasha will be a perfect fit for the game.

Tough prospect

Ertugral is not expecting things to be easy on Sunday afternoon in Cape Town and has prepared his team to be ready for ninety gruelling minutes.

The Chiefs coach said of his expectations of Sunday’s game. “Santos won a very tough encounter against Bloemfontein Celtic recently and we have seen that no matter where they may be on the league standings they can give any team a fight. We saw that they still good at getting balls over the top, their strength does lie in the fact that they have tall players and they do rely a lot on aerial balls”.

He is expecting his defence to work over time on Sunday as he said “they will be pushing us to the limit, they can create chances out nothing and are a very quick team. They have a better team then their results have suggested players like Rodgers, Isaacs and Gabonomang as well as old heads such as Musa Otieno have been playing into form recently”.

Spencer continuation

Chiefs man-of-the-match from the Telkom Cup Final Derrick Spencer is looking to carry on from where he has left off over the past two games. With two accomplished performances against Sundowns and Amazulu he will be hoping to make his third appearance of the season on Sunday and another good day at the office.

Spencer said of the game “the conditions in Cape Town are much warmer than we have been playing in over the past few games, we had rain in Durban and it was quiet cool during the final. So that is the first part of the game that will be different, the next step is that us and them are looking to improve our positions in the league and when you have two teams motivated and fired up you can expect a really good open and exciting game”.