Our season came to an end on Sunday in Rustenburg as we took on Jomo Cosmos in a friendly game at the Bafokeng Sports Palace, in the African Heritage trophy. Unfortunately we could not end off on a winning note.

As Cosmos defeated us, we gave a number of younger players an opportunity to get some much needed match practise and particularly impressive was our young Itumeleng Khune. He made a number of telling stops in the first half, he was unlucky as he had to be substituted at half time after injuring himself in the first half.

We cannot read much into Sunday’s game as most of the guys would probably have already been on holiday in their heads and after such a long season I would not blame them. For me, on a personal note.

I get to back home to Germany on Monday evening for the first time in about six months. I started out at Chiefs in July 2005; it has been eleven months of hard work. To go back home and spend some time with my wife and kids will be nice; unfortunately it won’t be too long as I will be back in South Africa on the 9th June, the day the World Cup begins.

I will be doing Television work for SuperSport during the World Cup and I will be covering Germany and Iran’s matches for them.

Anyway we will return to training on the 26th June and the first couple of days when we return will be to do some tests on all the guys as well as getting them back into shape, we will be parting ways with a number of players.

We also have some interesting signings in the pipelines for next season, which will help strengthen our squad in some important areas that should give us the edge next term.

These signings will be revealed within the next few weeks and I am sure you guys will be happy with what we have in mind for next season - obviously challenging for the title will be our number one objective.

This will be followed up with winning the Supa8 first up, and then the Coca Cola Cup and we will be once again looking for a successful defence of our ABSA Cup Crown.

Finally I would like to thank all of the supporters for helping us win the ABSA Cup trophy and for helping me to win the Coach of the tournament award which I picked up at last Thursday’s awards ceremony.

I would also like to say good bye to Mannfred Engelmann who has worked as our goalkeeper coach for the past few months - he is leaving in order to further his other business interests.

I wish him all the luck in the future and I hope to see you all next season when we play Manchester United in Cape Town on the 18th July and hopefully again on the 22nd July in Pretoria.

Not forgetting the small business of Pirates on the 20th July in Rustenburg, I hope to see you all at these prospective mouth watering encounters.