Online Reporter
Tadious Manyepo
Zimpapers Sports Hub
HERENTALS are no longer the quiet outsiders. Their six game unbeaten run and a gritty 1-0 win over Greenfuel in Chisumbanje at the weekend has pulled them within nine points of Premier Soccer League leaders Simba Bhora.
Coach Paul Benza is sticking to his modest script. Last year, he took over after Kumbirai Mutiwekuziva’s exit and guided the Students to a fifth place finish, the best by a Harare club. This season, he says, the aim hasn’t changed.
“Our target remains the same,” Benza told Zimpapers Sports Hub. “We finished fifth last year and we should be better than that this season. It’s what we are working on. The boys have been fantastic in recent weeks and the results have been amazing. What we need to do is just take each game as it comes. We can’t be in a position we aren’t on the log. We should not allow ourselves to go ahead of ourselves. That’s very simple. In the end, we need to be better than ourselves from last year.”
Herentals’ strength lies in its unusual make up. Owner Innocent Benza, now 54, is still a regular on the pitch, while his son Tino has been reborn after a positional switch. Paul, Innocent’s brother, says the family connection drives them harder.
“Rather than dragging us back, having some close family relations at the team push us to want to work even harder,” he said. “You look at how my brother Innocent is playing this season, it’s incredible. Tino has also been really amazing after we switched him positions. All of us are family and we can’t let the family down, really.”
Beyond the family backbone, Herentals are powered by players Benza has nurtured from the club’s youth ranks. Names like Nevermind Antonio, Joseph Chitavira, Webster Dombo and Brighton Majarira are now central to the squad.
“I think we have that relationship from the first division with most of these players at Herentals,” Benza explained. “We obviously know each other well and that makes the job a little bit easier. We hope to continue winning. Thousands of students from across the country also look up to the team for inspiration. That’s a huge responsibility we have to fulfill. So we will fight on to be able to achieve our targets.”
For now, Benza insists they are not in the title race. But with the gap to Simba Bhora shrinking from 13 points to nine in just five weeks, the Students are no longer a side anyone can dismiss.
Herentals’ quiet climb has turned into noise that the whole league can hear.
