University of Johannesburg coach Mandla Zwane says the team are determined to bounce back after suffering a loss to Tshwane University of Technology in the Varsity Football competition last week.<\/p>\n
The “Orange Army” will travel to Pretoria to tackle UP-Tuks at the Tuks Stadium on Thursday, looking for their second win this season to maintain their bid to reach the semifinals.<\/p>\n
Despite Thursday’s setback, Zwane said the players were not discouraged and were keen to prove themselves in the remaining matches.<\/p>\n
UJ opened their programme with a 1-0 win over Central University of Technology before losing to the log-leaders 2-0 this week.<\/p>\n
“It was unfortunate that we conceded two goals in the first seven minutes against TUT and it’s difficult to come back from that against a team of their calibre,” said Zwane.<\/p>\n
“But the spirit in the camp remains high and we want to come back strongly against Tuks.”<\/p>\n
He added, however, that they knew it would not be easy as the Varsity Football competition remained strong across the board.<\/p>\n
“There are many tough games in the tournament, but we are looking forward to the challenge of meeting Tuks on their home ground.<\/p>\n
“This is always a great rivalry and it should be another humdinger between two talented sides.”<\/p>\n
Zwane said their squad had undergone significant changes this year, with a large number of newcomers having joined.<\/p>\n
“We are going through a building phase, but we have definitely targeted a spot in the semifinals and the players are working hard towards that.”<\/p>\n
His comments were backed up by UJ skipper Sphesihle Mbhele, who said at the start of the competition that they wanted to build on last season’s momentum.<\/p>\n
“The goal is to take it one game at a time, but we’re not taking our eyes off the prize,” said Mbhele. “We are looking to go all the way.<\/p>\n
“This season our team is fairly new and is a younger team. But with that being said, the plan is to top the table again and to go a couple of steps further to win the tournament this time around.”<\/p>\n
UJ topped the log in the 2018 competition following the round-robin phase, but were frustrated in the semifinals when they went down to Wits 4-3 in a penalty shootout. TUT defeated Wits in the final.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
University of Johannesburg coach Mandla Zwane says the team are determined to bounce back after suffering a loss to Tshwane University of Technology in the Varsity Football competition last week. The “Orange Army” will travel to Pretoria to tackle UP-Tuks at the Tuks Stadium on Thursday, looking for their second win this season to maintain […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":58746,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1913,1733,1847],"class_list":["post-31333","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-uj-football","tag-university-of-johannesburg","tag-varsity-football"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31333","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31333"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31333\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}