SOWETO, SOUTH AFRICA - MARCH 05: Stuart Baxter and Tefu Mashamaite during the Soweto Derby press conference at FNB Stadium on March 05, 2015 in Soweto, South Africa. (Photo by Lefty Shivambu/Gallo Images)
Prior to that season, Amakhosi were dealt with a huge blow when they lost the League to Mamelodi Sundowns the last season.
Mashamaite’s Chiefs failed to lift the title with Masandawana topping the log with 65 points, while Chiefs finished as runners-up with 63, just two points behind the Pretoria outfit.
“It was a heartbreaker losing the title the way we did in 2013/14 to Sundowns,” remembers Mashamaite.
“Sundowns just surfaced out of nowhere, when we had a huge lead at one stage,” the defender was quoted on the Chiefs website.
“It was in February 2014 that we started playing in the CAF Champions League. All the travelling and the games kind of derailed us. At the start of the 2014/15 season, we said that we had to regain our integrity and we did in style.”
Mashamaite, who now plays his football for their tier side Baberwa FC, explains that they had to put the disappointment of the League aside going into the new season.
And having a number of quality players with the help of Stuart Baxter at the helm saw them go on to lift the PSL trophy in 2015, a season which the club deemed as “reclaiming the glory”.
“We started the season with Siphiwe Tshabalala and Bernard Parker. We had other guys like Mandla Masango and George Lebese coming through along with Reneilwe Letsholonyane. We played some great attacking football,” he added.
“We had great players in our squad. Like I said, we put the previous season behind us and to have someone like Stuart Baxter who was a great man-manager helped us. He pushed us and constantly reminded us how good we were as players. This helped put us back to the confidence level that we needed to be at, which ultimately led to us reclaiming the glory,” he says.
The lanky defender was Chiefs’ captain during that season playing in all of the League games at that time. He went in top win three major individual accolades at the end of the season awards, PSL players of the season, player of the season and defender of the season.
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