A veteran of many Soweto derbies during his 10 years as a Chiefs player, Neil Tovey led The Amakhosi to many triumphs over the Buccaneers. He has come out and afforded the current crop of Chiefs players looking to do the same on Saturday, some insight on how to get the job done.

According to the former Chiefs and national team skipper, settling in early getting the first touches of the ball and calming your nerves, will help take The Amakhosi some way to victory on Saturday and the man who walked up to the podium many a time to lay his hands on silver ware for Chiefs thinks that the man in gold and black can take all three points in Durban on Saturday.

Easy start

For Chiefs to win the match they need to be composed in the early parts of the game, and they should hold onto as much possession of the ball as possible in the early exchanges of the match. As Tovey says “once the game kicks off, Chiefs need to get the ball, if they are not kicking off and should move it around, between the defence and the midfield settle in get your rhythm going keep the opposition chasing and the first part of the job is done”.

Tovey who made the No. 9 jersey his during his days as a persistent no-let-up defender, further went on to add “this Chiefs team has many experienced players who have played in this match previously, so the atmosphere and the pressure will be something they are used to and they need to draw on their past experience to pull Chiefs through”.

Demolition derby

One of Tovey’s worst derby nightmares as a Chiefs player came during the 1996 Coca-Cola Challenge when The Amakhosi were defeated 4-1 by Pirates at the FNB Stadium. He believes that a lot of lessons were learnt on that fateful Saturday afternoon. They are lessons, if heeded, will ensure there is no repeat of such a score line, he explained “in 1996 when we played them in a Coca Cola Challenge game it must go down as my worst experience in not just a Soweto derby.

"But in general, that day at the FNB nothing worked for us it took us a while to start stringing passes together, we just could not find a beat and by the time we managed to get things going we were already a few goals down. My advice to the guys is get it right from the beginning -- stick to your game plan and do not lose focus for one second in the opening 15 minutes, these games are generally very close and one mistake can see the opposition punish you and coming back from a goal down in the Soweto derby is a tough challenge”.

The game

With Pirates losing their last league game Tovey feels that they are there for the taking, and SuperSport United demonstrated when they defeated Pirates in their last league game a week ago that the Buccaneers rebuilding process is not yet complete.

As Tovey added “we saw how SuperSport exploited Pirates weaknesses a week ago, Chiefs should take heed of what Gavin Hunt's boys did to Pirates. It is in my opinion not difficult for them to do the same; there are some glaring weakness which Pirates have in their armoury and a couple of games down the line these points have not been rectified by them as yet”.