Sunday will present a chance for Pirates to take a step closer to making history. City Pirates are enjoying a rich vein of form in the Nedbank Cup preliminaries.
Sunday will present a chance for Pirates to take a step closer to making history. City Pirates are enjoying a rich vein of form in the Nedbank Cup preliminaries.
After sweeping through town rivals in the first round, they are now on their way to the regional playoffs. Pirates will be representing Makana against three other clubs from Camdeboo, Kouga and Sundays River municipality this Sunday.
The winners of this third leg of the preliminaries – the regional competition – will go through to the provinicial round and the winners there will make it to the national draw.
After struggling to register away wins in SAB league last season, Pirates will go to these regional playoffs with their tails up after registering two wins in two matches this past weekend.
The Nedbank Cup competition has been known to be a stepping stone for many footballer’s journey to stardom and has taken a host of young players from amateur level to premiership football.
Even making the provincial playoffs would be a huge achievement for players from Grahamstown, who rarely get the opportunity to play outside their own municipal areas. Not many would have given the side a chance to even make it past local rivals 11 Attackers and MARU.
However it should not come as a surprise that the club is making big improvements on last season’s performance. They paved the way for local clubs to keep fit during the close season by hosting and participating in a number of pre-season tournaments.
Their winning formula seems mainly to rely on their strong backline as they are still struggling in front of the goal. Pirates conceded the most number of goals in their SAB league campaign last season and they finished in fifth place on the log.
As they look to strengthen their defence, they will be hoping to improve their scoring abilities to ensure a better campaign ahead.
They could not have started on a more positive note than their current Nedbank Cup form, as they seek to add their name to the record books.
