Balfour Park-based Highlands Park FC hope to be third time lucky and post a win over Durban side AmaZulu when the two teams meet this evening at the King Zwelithini Stadium in the opening rounds of the Premier Soccer League’s richest cup competition, the Nedbank Cup.
The two sides have met twice this season, with their league encounter at the Makhulong Stadium, home to Highlands, ending with a victory for AmaZulu but the return ended in a draw in Durban.
When the two sides meet tonight, the Lions of the North, as Highlands are better-known to their die-hard fans, will be hoping to post their first victory over Usuthu since their return to the elite league, the Absa Premiership.
Modest Highlands coach Owen Da Gama, known in football circles as ODG, who has transformed the team into a mean machine since taking over in September last year, said they were hoping to register their first victory over AmaZulu this season.
“I am hoping we can post our first win over them since our return to the Premier Soccer League at the beginning of the season. We have lost one match and drew the other and my boys are itching for their first win against them,” ODG told a press conference at Premier Soccer League office in Parktown, Johannesburg ahead of their encounter tonight.
Da Gama said there was no such thing as a loss at Highlands but said, “Each time we lose, it becomes a learning curve, as we look at what we could have done better in order to turn those losses into victories.”
His defender Bevan Fransman, when asked how far the team hoped to go in the Nedbank Cup, said they were taking each game as it came and right now they were focussed on overcoming the hurdle of AmaZulu.
“We’re well focussed and each player in the team is well prepared for the game. We just hope this match will be a turning point for us and we can inflict our first defeat on Usuthu this season.”
Highlands has been a revelation since the arrival of ODG. The team beat Pirates in their own backyard in the first round of the league and held them to a draw in the second round. They also held Chiefs and Sundowns to goalless draws in the opening matches, but unfortunately lost to the Yellow Machine, as Sundowns are known, in the return leg of the Absa Premiership at home. They are still to play Chiefs away.
