Birmingham to change tack with game plan

AFTER having been to the SAB League playoffs twice without success, Birmingham City aims to take a different approach to what they have been doing to get promoted to the ABC Motsepe League in the past.

City will have to worm their way past F C Siyanda, Blackpool, and then Mighty Bucks in the group stages.

Club chairman Vusi Khumalo said they have been doing everything they could to make sure their players were in a good mental state.

“We are highly motivated and we feel that it’s our time we get promotion, and we even came up with a hashtag for the tournament, #PhendulaThina.

“We know that everyone who’s going to be there is praying to God, but it’s time for Him to answer our prayers.

“Because we’ve been there and got the disappointing results, but we are well prepared now,” said Khumalo.

He said the team had a “special four-week preparation” after the league concluded, and they’ve also managed to do their homework on some of the opponents.

“I believe we have structured a good programme that has helped our players in many ways.

“We managed to go and watch our opponents, but not all of them, and we now have an idea of how to approach these games. And we have sat down with the technical team, and took the playoffs that we played in Alice last year and then we analysed the three games we played in Alice.

“Like when did we concede a goal and how did we concede, when and how we equalised, and what were the overall challenges that we went through.”

Khumalo said they were looking forward to touching down in Grahamstown tomorrow.

“We have played friendlies and the recent one was against University of Fort Hare (UFH) in Alice. We decided to play them because one of our opponents [Blackpool] are from the same stream where UFH play.

“That stream has been a tough one throughout the season, and playing UFH was like a preparatory game for us, because they have been competing this season.

“And we needed to check where we are in terms of many things like agility, and communication on the pitch.

“We used the quota system where we fielded five U21 players during so that we don’t struggle when we reach the tournament, and the nice thing for us is that UFH had older players.”

Khumalo said having been on a mission to get promotion since two seasons ago he was positive they would not get stage fright.

“We are playing against teams from the region and the venue will surely be packed, and after what the boys experienced in the playoffs last season, they now know what to expect.

“Last season it’s just that we were not ready to win the tournament and after we realised that, we were able to build from our mistakes.”