After an extended break due to the recently concluded Africa Cup of Nations, Chiefs will be up against a Thanda Royal Zulu team in Rustenburg, who like The Amakhosi will be looking to improve on their league standing. Instead Zwane holds the opinion that he and his teammates will not be focusing on the much-hyped up clash between them and some of his former teammates such as Patrick Mayo, Serge Djiehoua and Scara Ngobese. The media have been playing up the meeting between Chiefs and Thanda Royal and in particular have singled out the fact that Djiehoua and Ngobese will be out to make their mark on Wednesday’s match.

Group effort

Zwane, who could be making his 199th appearance in all competition for Chiefs told kaizerchiefs.com that there is a bigger picture to the match than just focusing on the former Chiefs players in the Thanda squad.

He said “I have learnt down the years that no matter who the opposition are they always lift their game when they face us, playing Chiefs is motivation enough for any team. So we will not concern ourselves with worrying about individuals, Thanda as a team have regrouped and for us it is important that as a collective we stop them, if we focus on one or two guys we will actually lose sight of what we supposed to be doing on Wednesday. That is to win the match and restart our league programme by coming out with three points”.

Blazing start

Zwane who turns 34 later this year, does believe that Wednesday’s game will be an open match and given the fact that Chiefs as a team were not happy to close off 2007 in 11th position on the log, they will be more determined to do well in the second half of the season. The first task is to emerge with a win on Wednesday, Arthur added “Thanda are a team who play open attacking football, we have seen that they do not wait for you to attack and are more than willing to take the match to the opposition. For us we know that we cannot remain in 11th place for much longer and a win on Wednesday will push us upwards on the standings, success in the opening match will really help set the tone for what can be a different second phase to the campaign then the first was”.