If there is a person I want to shake hands with and give a prize for correct predictions, it’s none other than our secretary general for Alex football, Mafika Morajane.
Although Alex United were a game away from clinching the ABC Motsepe League, Morajane predicted that United would not win the league as they failed to do last season. Hats off to you, sir. You were spot on with your prediction.
It’s the biggest disappointment, ever, in Alexandra. Everyone thought that this time around United had learnt their lesson after last season’s narrow defeat by Highlands Park. Last season, the Hope City Giants needed a minimum result of a draw to clinch the league, yet it was not to be.
They were humiliated at home in front of their fans in the top of the table clash which saw Highlands Park going off to the promotional play-offs and ultimately securing a spot in the National First Division.
It was the same again this season. United needed a minimum result of a draw against African All Stars to qualify for the promotional play-offs, and, again, it was not to be as they suffered the same fate.
Ya, izinto ziman’ukwenzeka madoda (Fate is out of our hands).
Whom do we blame in this case? The coach said she did everything humanly possible to prepare the team for the game
against Stars.
Although the team had a slow start in the league and peaked in the middle of the season, demolishing some teams 8-0 and 6-2, everyone thought this season was Alexandra’s turn to pop the champagne.
In the game against Stars, I blame the coach for not making timeous adjustments to her team when the writing was on the wall.
Her introduction of Collins Zimba and Pedro Marques seemed to work, but the team still needed miracles in the middle of park.
They needed a guy who could hold the ball and dictate the pace of the game to allow strikers to get into spaces for scoring opportunities. That player would have been Katlego ‘Skates’ Mbatha.
He was thrown into the fray during the referee’s optional time, which was five minutes in this case, and what could he have done in that space of time when they were trailing 2-0?
Common sense dictates that she should have thrown everything and everyone into attack mode at the start of the second half.
But as aptly summed up by the club’s chairperson Nkani Dube, “It’s football and these things do happen. It’s back to the drawing board for us again to plot our new strategy for 2016.”
