Amakhosi and Bafana Bafana number Rowen Fernandez has been enjoying the short break afforded to him the rest of players in the PSL, by spending some time enjoying the waves on the Kwa Zulu Natal coastline. Kaizerchiefs .com were able to contact the Chiefs goalkeeper and managed to steal him away from the beach for a short while on Wednesday morning, to throw a few questions at him.

As we heard from him about his eagerness to get back to training as well as the fact that he cannot wait for the New Year to come in as he eagerly awaits Chiefs meeting with SuperSport on the 6th January.

KC.COM: Rowen how has the festive season been going, in particular have you been enjoying your holiday at the beach?

Rowen Fernandez: The festive period Christmas day and Boxing Day as always is a special time for me I spent it with a number of my friends and family members, unfortunately though my brother was not around as he lives in the USA. I must say that my holiday has been really enjoyable it has been a long time since I spent a holiday such as this one, all I do is spend hours on the beach swimming and just relaxing it has been a wonderful holiday.

KC.COM: In two days time you will have to swop the beach for the training ground, are you looking forward towards resuming training on Friday?

RF: The break has been a much needed one, I will be happy to get back to training on Friday after a while one begins to miss the guys and the coaching staff as well once football is in your blood stream you can not stay too long with out it. Also the way we ended the year with a number of victories it makes one eager to go back and get the campaign moving again.

KC.COM: The run into the year over November and December has really helped Chiefs turn around what started off not looking like much would come out of this season?

RF: To be honest we really did start off the season poorly with a number of below par performances and we really it was only the players who could turn things around, thankfully we all got together and we worked as a team to get things moving in the right direction. It took a lot of hard work for us to turn things around immediately after losing to Bloemfontein Celtic in November; we could not look back and had to look forward. We forgot about the previous eight games and concentrated on the next six games of 2006, things worked out for the better and we now stand on second place in the league.

KC.COM: Having achieved this feat, by going undefeated from early November through to the end of the year can the team avoid a New Years hangover?

RF: The players at Kaizer Chiefs at the moment are a very determined and professional group of players; I know that the guys were looking after themselves over this holiday time. We have gone through too much as a team recently and have worked too hard to start taking things for granted, after the Celtic loss we set ourselves a goal and we reached beyond our expectations.

When December started we set ourselves a target for points and we beat that target, in January we have five games and we need to win them all.

There is no time for us to slouch around and in terms of results on the pitch we have to avoid dropping points, we enter a very crucial period in the championship race and we need to make our own lives easy by winning basically our next ten league games.

KC.COM: The New Year will see Chiefs start off their fixtures with a game against SuperSport United, a team which we last defeated in a league game in May 2005?

RF: SuperSport have always shown that they lift their game when they play us and they normally give us a go, I must say that the way we are playing and the confidence level in the team at the moment. We are ready to take on any opponent, the fact that we have not beaten them in such a long time will motivate us to want to do so records are set to be broken and we will do our best to make sure that we end this dominance that they have had over us.

KC.COM: Rowen as 2006 ends what objectives have you set for yourself going into the new year, on a Chiefs and national team level?

RF: With Chiefs I hope that I can continue you to perform the way I have over the last couple of game, obviously there is always room for improvement and I need to get stronger and stronger game by game. I would like for us to challenge strongly for the league and we have played ourselves into a position where we can win the league, also to mount a successful defence of our ABSA Cup title.

With the national team I feel that if I want to be the countries number goalkeeper I need to continue playing well at club level, and winning trophies on a domestic level will help me keep my national team place.

KC.COM: Rowen thank you for taking time off during your holiday to speak to us.

RF: To speak to www.kaizerchiefs.com is always a pleasure, to the fans enjoy the remainder of your holidays and have a prosperous new year.