Last season, Gaborone United (GU) broke their two decades jinx when they won the league championship for the first time in twenty years.
The team is now participating in the Club African championship and they might, in turn, make history for themselves again.
They held one of South Africa’s biggest teams, Orlando Pirates, to a goalless draw in Gaborone and anything can happen in the second league away.
Meanwhile at home, the tournament that has been eluding the team is the lucrative Coca-Cola Cup.
Since its inception in 1992, GU has never won the tournament but has been to the finals twice.
The Coca Cola Cup is almost in its second decade and GU might also break the twenty-year jinx and pocket something in their medal cabinet. The team has already shown commitment towards winning the tournament and has already qualified for the quarterfinals.
What is so interesting about ‘Moyagoleele’, as they are affectionately called, is the fact that the team is winning their matches with wider margins.
They won their first match in the competition by a margin of 13 goals and on Thursday, they beat First Division side, Great North Tigers (GNT) 5-0.
This has now left their two players, Ronald Chikomo and Wellington Maposa, leading the pack for the top goalscorer award.
Maposa has seven while Chikomo is still stuck with six goals he scored when they won by a margin of 13 goals.
Against GNT Maposa was trailing Chikomo by two goals and his hat trick means he leads the latter by a goal. This has set an interesting battle in the team because obviously all of them want to be the leading goal scorers and earn themselves P15 000.
This will also result in the team taking their matches seriously. The team, however, faces an uphill battle because most of the teams that progressed to the quarter finals are mainly from the Premier League and, for that matter, are the so called big ones, like Township Rollers, Mochudi Centre Chiefs and Extension Gunners.
GU has a taxing schedule.
They are juggling the Africa champions League, Coca Cola Cup and the Premier League all at the same trot. This might work against the team as time goes on.
However, against GNT, GU used most of the players who warm the bench and they did not disappoint. It showed the team has depth in reserve but at the end of the day it’s all about how the players coordinate.
Some of the big teams would also want to make their mark in the tournament. Rollers would not want any team to come near them as far as the record of the tournament is concerned. They would want to win the tournament for a record fifth time.
The last time Rollers netted the tournament was five years ago.
On the other hand, Extension Gunners would also want something to smile about. Of course, they still have a chance to win the league but they would want something in their pockets because the league’s payout is going to come a bit later.
Gunners won the Coca-Cola Cup once and that was during its inception in 1992, after defeating Tafic. Since then the Cup has been slipping through their fingers.
Mochudi Centre Chiefs would also want to make it two in three years and would not be taking any chances. They won it for the first time two years ago and last year they lost to the eventual winners, Uniao Flamengo Santos in the semi-finals.
