By Eddie Chikamhi
Giants Dynamos are smelling a big chance to gatecrash into the Castle Lager Premiership football championship race as they hope to take advantage of the mediocrity displayed by teams at the top ahead of the second-half of the marathon.
The Glamour Boys, who had a dreadful start under Lloyd Chigowe, have since recovered and are now five points shy of the log leaders FC Platinum.
The platinum miners were inactive at the weekend, but they managed to maintain pole position after their nearest rivals in the race Black Rhinos and Chicken Inn continued to drop points, leaving the race wide open.
Chicken Inn fell 1-2 to ZPC Kariba, while Rhinos lost 0-1 to Highlanders. But Dynamos reaffirmed their belief with a 2-0 win over Mushowani at Rufaro on Sunday as they drew closer to the top.
Dynamos had been written off in this year’s title race, but their coach Tonderai Ndiraya said the stagnation at the top has increased their hopes of an unanticipated comeback.
“When that happens you are naturally bound to have hope. But like I said in previous interviews, we would not want to put our players under pressure since we are a team under reconstruction.
“Of course, we have always had hope from the onset that we can raise the standards of performance of the team and so far there is some progress.
“Now what we want to see is the consistency and I hope we will get that so that we will be able to be a team which we are known to be,” said Ndiraya.
FC Platinum, who host Harare City at Mandava tomorrow, lead the pack with 32 points and have a game in hand. CAPS United moved into second place with a 1-0 victory at Manica Diamonds on Sunday which took their tally to 31 points.
Chicken Inn, Black Rhinos and ZPC Kariba are tied on 30 points in the top five. Ngezi Platinum Stars, who host Triangle tomorrow, are sixth on 28 points while Dynamos are in seventh place with 27 points.
The Glamour Boys have managed to win six games, draw six and lost two under Ndiraya, which translates to a 57 percent pass rate for the gaffer.
The former midfielder said he had set his team targets broken down into small portions of five games and will review their performance after their games against Hwange, Chicken Inn, Herentals and TelOne.
“This is the last part of the competition and I am glad that we have started off on a good note. (We beat Mushowani by) the same scoreline the team won with before I took over and I am hoping that we will not mentally get into what transpired in the first half of the season.
“We want to build on this result, we would want to build on the momentum. I want to forget about the first round. Though we have done well, I want us to do much better in the second round.
“We have given ourselves some targets and we have cleared the first hurdle. We want to see how far we can go in the first five matches of the second round.
“If we manage to get some good points then we know that we have set the tone for a great finish to the season,” said Ndiraya.
The Glamour Boys, however, have not been fluent on the field of play despite the results.
Ndiraya said DeMbare should start winning games with consistency.
“I am not really impressed by the (lack of) consistency of the team. It looks like we are not getting the required consistency. We win this week, the next week we draw.
“Although we have been doing our best to avoid defeats, we would want our team to go on a winning run. If you want to really be fighting with the big boys you have to get the consistency that is required and that’s what we are not getting.
“I want us to forget about what happened in the first round. This is the second round and we have started on a good note.
“Now we want to see what follows. My plea and my wish is to get the required consistency,” said Ndiraya.
Source : The Herald
The post Dembare Gatecrashes Title Race, Ndiraya Demands Consistency appeared first on Zimbabwe Today.