adminRay Bande Senior Sports Reporter
MUTARE Castle Lager Premiership outfit Buffaloes FC gaffer, Saul Chaminuka, believes his team will not be relegated come the end of the 2015 season. The reigning top-flight league coach of the year picked up his first set of maximum points on Sunday when his team got the better of equally struggling Flame Lilly at Sakubva Stadium. As Chaminuka starts collecting maximum points, Buffaloes fans who watched Sunday’s match might have words of praise for Chaminuka after he thrust Vincent Makaha – a known outright top man – at the heart of defence.
Chaminuka did the same in the away league match against Harare City a fortnight ago which ended in a stalemate and to his credit the decision seems to paying dividend as Makaha appears to have settled well in that position.
Two goals in the last 10 minutes was all that Chaminuka needed to register his first win since his return as the army team’s head coach in that low key home encounter against Flame Lilly.
With both teams deep in the relegation zone and gunning for nothing less than maximum points, emotions were naturally simmering and the match was always not going to be a stroll in the park for both teams.
However, until Sunday, the veteran gaffer had not won a match since taking over the reigns in June from Joseph ‘Shaba’ Takaringofa, who was caretaker coach at Buffaloes and later became his assistant in the current Buffaloes technical department set up.
Buoyed by the well deserved triumph, Chaminuka told this newspaper that he was satisfied with the performance of his team and expressed hope that the win could be a start of better things to come.
He said relegation was not in his scheme of things. “Our greatest challenge of late was that we were not scoring goals and now that we have managed to score two I sincerely hope that this could be the start of better things from the team.
While others could be thinking about relegation, I am actually concerned about getting a respectable position at the end of the season. To me relegation is not an issue. We are not going to be relegated,” said Chaminuka. The match against Flame Lilly started at a slow pace with strikers from both teams taking turns to miss the target hence a goalless first half.
However, the hosts came back after the breather playing a more purposeful game and their efforts were rewarded late in the 83rd minute when speedy forward Lloyd Katongomara’s clinical finish off Kudzai Mwaramba’s cross beat Flame Lilly goalminder Prosper Chigumba all systems out.
Five minutes later, veteran Buffaloes’ striker Jacob Muzokomba put the game beyond the reach of their opponents when he got to the end of a beautiful through pass from Philip Thembani and fired home a hard and low shot that gave Chigumba no chance.
Online Reporter