Highlands Park will be among the 32 teams that will be chasing glory in the country’s richest Premier Soccer League cup competition.
The Nedbank Cup has over the years taken on the tag of being the David versus Goliath Cup as it features teams from the lower rungs of South African football. There is a whopping R30 million up for grabs to be shared among the 32 teams in the competition, with R10 million going to the winners.
The draw for the cup will be conducted on 15 January and coach Owen Da Gama’s Balfour Park-based charges have already been confirmed as one of the eight winners of the National First Division (NFD) preliminaries of the competition, along with six teams from the South African Football Association (Safa) structures.
The round of 32 teams consists of 16 clubs from the Absa Premiership, eight clubs from the NFD and eight clubs from Safa structures that include clubs that ply their trade in the ABC Motsepe League and the SAB League.
Teams from the NFD that have secured passage to the competition include Super Eagles, Stellenbosch FC, Ubuntu Cape Town, Richards Bay FC, Cape Town All Stars, Mthatha Bucks, Royal Eagles and the Lions of the North as
Highlands Park is popularly known among its faithful supporters.
Free State’s Super Eagles, KwaZulu-Natal’s Richards Bay FC and the Western Cape’s Ubuntu Cape Town will be making their first run in the Nedbank Cup’s last 32 stage.
From the Safa structures, there are two clubs yet to be confirmed while those that have already qualified are Swallows FC from the ABC Motsepe League which will represent Gauteng, and Orbit College from the same league will represent North West. Pabalelo Chiefs in the SAB League come from the Northern Cape.
The rest of the qualifiers from the Safa structures that will be in familiar territory in the Nedbank Cup’s last 32 teams include Eastern Cape’s EC Bees in the ABC Motsepe League, the Free State’s Bloemfontein Young Tigers also in the ABC Motsepe League and Limpopo’s Mariveni United in the SAB League.
