Amongst the shining performances on Saturday evening for The Amakhosi against Jomo Cosmos, was the display put on by David Mathebula who mesmerized the Cosmos defense and was a catalyst behind prying open them open on numerous occasions during the game.

Mathebula’s nifty foot work and neat passes enabled him to be a thorn in the Cosmos side all evening long, it eventually lead to the visitors getting frustrated with him being able to regularly escape their attentions and as a result he was on the wrong end of a number of tough challenges from the Ezenkosi players.

They began to target Mathebula as the danger man and on every occasion that he got the ball in the latter stages of the game and tried in every way to rob him of possession. Mathebula’s performance against Cosmos was indicative of his normal attractive and speedy style of play and it was a further indicator that Mathebula’s individual game to game form will go along way towards guiding Chiefs' title ambitions in the right direction.

With Muhsin Ertugral breeding younger players Mathebula will be seeing a lot of action over the season, he is not worried about the fact that he could be the target of some harsh tackles from opposing players.

Hitman

It became obvious on Saturday evening that the more Mathebula asserted himself in the game, the more it worked on the opposition’s mind to stop him and they then resorted to a number of unorthodox ways to keep the nimble midfielder quiet.

He had to bare the brunt of some over the top challenges which saw him leave the field on a number of occasions for treatment during the second half. Mathebula though is of the opinion that if he wants to assert his authority as one of the leagues most influential talents then he will have to be prepared for some over zealous tackling.

“In the game of football it is always going to happen that if the opposition see you as a threat they going to try and stop you. From my point I feel that if we want to win the league then there is a lot we need to overcome. Part of that would also be overcoming all the teams we face and nobody is going to give us three points, we are going to have to work for them and over the next nine months there are going to be times when there will be matches that will be very physical and others that won’t be. We must be prepared to face any kind of opposition.

In the hunt

While he played a bit part role in Chiefs pre-season campaign, David was pleased with the fact that Muhsin Ertugral had afforded him the opportunity to start this past weekend’s game against Cosmos. He was not about to let the opportunity pass him by and was ready to give a good account of himself and those who watched the game believe that he did.

Mathebula, commenting on the chance given to by Ertugral, said “As a player you work very hard during the week in training and hope that your efforts get noticed and that you are given a run on the weekend. So the coach rewarded my hard work and dedication by giving me the chance to start on Saturday, it was only natural that I would go all out which I did. I do feel that I have perhaps done my chances of playing against Wits this coming weekend a lot of good with the way things went for me over the weekend.”