The sooner we forget the tragedy of a loss against Golden Arrows the better! Judging from the performance and allowing Arrows to sneak in a last minute goal is enough to convince me that luck is continuously eluding us and thus makes our race to the championship a little strenuous.

Whilst the prophets of doom have already dismissed our chances of staging a comeback and threatening for league championship, I must warn that the race is still open and very unpredictable at this stage. The continuous changing of positions in the top eight coupled with unstable points margins and goal differences are enough evidence to confirm that this season is a tough one. It would indeed be disrespectful for any team to prematurely conclude that the league has already been claimed whilst teams have more than ten or slightly less matches to contest.

Whilst we suffered the indignity of dropping match points, I cannot bear the sensational stories that were created to further plunge our team and its supporters into discontent. Media reports abound with allegations of my outburst and anger and have twisted and turned such to imply that I have launched a personal attack on the Technical Team. Furthermore, we have been inundated with calls that sought of us to confirm the departure and resignation of our Head Coach. I was surprised to read that I had stormed out of the Harry Oppenheimer stadium with malicious anger after watching our team throwing away valuable points.

Well, I can only conclude that the writer sought nothing but to gain the favour of his editor by reporting such unsavoury news. I am not certain if walking early out of the stadium before the final whistle can now be qualified as storming out in anger. Be that as it may, we will continue with our effort not to be distracted by such negative coverage but focus on our challenge to rekindle the spirit of winning amongst our lads.

The match obviously showed that the team is playing under tremendous pressure. It has been unthinkable for a player like Rowen to concede such a harmless goal that was something that summed up the anxiety of sustaining our relentless pursuit for the title. Secondly, I share the same concerns and frustrations of our Technical Team and boys as it clearly shows that the ball is just not rolling for us. Be that as it may I am certain that luck will visit us again and spur us on.

It was also disturbing to read very early that the Technical Team had thrown in the towel by conceding that we are out of the race. This was indeed unfortunate and something that I believe was expressed not to further plunge us into misery but to encourage ourselves to support the team to finish the race on a decent high. I am convinced that the recent misfortunes invite us all to rally behind the team and show our true patriotic love by motivating the boys to soldier on. Whilst I admit that not many were impressed with our performance, I am certain that we are still in the race and it may be futile for anyone to believe otherwise.

WITS UNIVERSITY

This weekend we engage Wits University at its home, the Bidvest Stadium. This would be another difficult encounter and one that we approach with a sole objective of revenging our defeat earlier in the season. A good result against Wits would be the right antidote to remedy the slump in our performance and hopefully set us back into a winning streak.

Still on the game, I am not certain if the selection of the Bidvest Wits Stadium as venue for the encounter was a rational one considering the intensity and the rivalry of supporters of the two teams. Whilst it was the prerogative of Wits to select the venue, I still feel the venue is inadequate and obviously questionable particularly when we seek to prepare ourselves for 2010. Perhaps it could have been better had the game been scheduled at the Johannesburg Stadium but it seems the powers that be at Wits thought otherwise.

This reminds me of our playing days at the Ellispark Stadium when we were to host Orlando Pirates. The CEO of the PSL was quick to divert the match to the much bigger FNB Stadium, a venue that undoubtedly would accommodate the anticipated thousands of supporters of the two teams. This was on the basis that the two teams could play in a venue that had potential to cater for that capacity crowd whilst TV provided television coverage for those that could not attend the game.

Whilst we could have stubbornly insisted on Ellispark as our home ground, we had to oblige and consider the devastating consequences that befell us in the past when stadiums filled to capacity and potentially endangered the lives of innocent and fun loving supporters.

Well, the truth with Bidvest Stadium is that the venue is inadequate and its crammed dressing rooms are just enough to convince us. The fence that barricades supporters from invading the pitch is just too close to the players comfort whilst the only decent sitting pavilion can easily buckle under any pressure.

Whilst I respect the fact that Wits held the prerogative of choice, I still believe they could at least have engaged their minds. The PSL in this case displayed double standards and we can only pray and hope that nothing goes wrong on this day. As for us, our mission is to redeem our fortunes and stage a performance that would crown our mettle as a championship material that can only be demeaned by those that are disrespectful.

KC YOUTH DEVELOPMENT

The reports that negatively painted our Youth Development Programme raised unfortunate untruths about our efforts to create opportunities for young talent in the country. It was just disturbing to read comments from one erstwhile coach who was primarily responsible for shipping players out of our programme to other clubs. Amazingly, the same coach made crooked statements that implied that our programme was in some quandary.

Well, I can only promise to dig deep into the matter and hopefully rectify any discrepancy that may have arisen out of our programme. As for some administrators that commented on the programme, our management would further investigate their utterances by getting into the root cause of their allegations. We are determined to create a viable developmental programme that has the making of sustaining any potential and talent we unearth so that such could be afforded the opportunity to don the jersey of a senior team. I must admit that we have learnt interesting lessons from the Siphiwe Tshabalala and others deal and we may therefore never wish to repeat the same mistakes again. We are thus on course to grow our reservoir of football talent and we are poised to redesign and re-engineer our development programme.

Kaizer Motaung (Mr)


Chairman/Managing Director