adminRicky Zililo Senior Sports Reporter
AMBITIOUS Premiership side How Mine and Harare City shake-off the two-week long break dust with a training match at Fairbridge this morning. The PSL imposed the break to accommodate the Warriors’ commitments in the Afcon and Chan qualifiers. Shortly before the break, How Mine held Highlanders to a 1-1 draw in a match that they could easily have won had they been potent in front of goal, while Harare City clobbered Dongo Sawmill 3-0 in Rusape.
Harare City’s victory against Dongo Sawmill was their first win on the road this season and they will want to build on that against How Mine this afternoon.
How Mine and Harare City played to a goalless draw in a league match played earlier this season. The two teams have tricky ties when league action resumes next weekend with the miners playing host to Hwange while the Sunshine Boys lock horns with Caps United.
Luke Masomere, the How Mine coach, said he wants to give match fitness to his charges who resumed training on Monday.
“We had a deserved two-week break which really helped some of our players that had minor injuries to recover. Now that they’ve recovered, we’ll assess their fitness against Harare City in the training game. Remember we played Harare City during pre-season and now it’s our turn to host them as we sharpen our squads. We’re bracing for a more demanding last half of the season,” said Masomere.
Former Highlanders and Shabanie Mine midfielder Louis Matawu, who was not registered for the first half of the season, is among the players How Mine will give a run out today.
Matawu, according to Masomere, is ready to return to first team action while Fungai Chirinda, who had been sidelined through injury, has also started light training.
Skipper Gilbert Banda will start on the bench, goalkeeper Nonjabulo Dube, Heritein Masuku, Charles Sibanda, who missed the Bosso game due to injury, and Godfrey Nguwodzawo are some of the players set to feature this afternoon. The gold miners are also expected to give their Under-20 players Stephen Nyambabvu, a defender, and attacking midfielder Adolf Muganyi first team action.
Masomere allayed fears that former Soccer Star of the Year Tawanda Muparati will be deregistered to make way for Matawu because of a nagging knee injury.
Sources at How Mine had said Muparati, signed as a free agent after his contract with Dynamos ran out at the end of last season, would be given time to “heal without pressure” and pave way for Matawu.
“Obviously the return of Matawu means that we’ve to open space in our squad but I haven’t decided who to loan out. There will be adjustments in our squad so everyone has to challenge me to show that they deserve to be part of the squad in the second half.
“Muparati has shown great signs of recovery and at first we thought that he was going to go under the knife but we’ve seen that there’s no need for him to be operated on because he’s steadily getting better. We’ll see how he is next month and we remain hopeful that he’ll play a big part in the second half of the season,” he said.
Just like How Mine, Harare City are using today’s training match to decide on which players to chop.
“There are key decisions to be made as we approach the next window and we’ll be using the training game to assess players. It won’t be fair to just drop players without giving them a game situation. We know How Mine are going to give us a good game,” said Mkhuphali Masuku, Harare City’s assistant coach.
How Mine’s defence will have to keep an eye on Francesco Zekumbawire and Martin Vengesai.
David Kutyauripo and Themba Ndlovu will marshal Harare City’s defence while James Jam, Tendai Samanja, Talent Chawapiwa, Honey Chimutimunzeve and Nicholas Alifandika also need close monitoring.
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