“Eat six, dream six play for six.”

This could something Tlisane Motaung (UP-Tuks head coach) might just have been emphasising to his players during this week’s training sessions and with good reason. Seldom if ever has the team been in such dire need for six points to qualify for the Varsity Football semi-finals. 

Tomorrow night when UP-Tuks takes to the field to play North West University Mafikeng at home, it will be "do or die" for both teams. The team who loses will need more than a miracle to get to the playoffs.

As things stand at the moment, UP-Tuks is currently fifth on the log with eight points and North West University Mafikeng fourth with nine points. The benchmark to get to the semi-finals is considered to be 14 so with three points at stake for a win both teams need to win both their last two games. 

Things are not really going to get any easier for the team who wins tomorrow as UP-Tuks next game is an away game against UWC while Northwest Mafikeng will be playing UJ who is the only team not to have lost a game so far. 

Motaung admits that his team is in for a tough challenge. Last year when UP-Tuks played North West University Mafikeng the score was 0-0. A somewhat disconcerting statistic is that in the history of the Varsity Tournament UP-Tuks has never managed to beat UWC on their home turf.

The UP-Tuks coach made it clear that he has full confidence in his players. 

“Our training has been going well. We have worked on a few specific aspects. It was nothing major. Just small little things I think the players can execute better.”

Motaung singled out the team’s defence as being their strong point at the moment. 

“The results will confirm this. During our last three games, we did not concede any goals. It is now just making a case of making sure of finishing off what we start when we set up goal-scoring opportunities.”

Richard Moremi, Lebohang Montueli, Sabelo Tsambo and Jeremiah Nkwana combining with Claudio de Almeida have shown that they are capable of outfoxing any defence at any time. As Moremi pointed out they just needed a bit of luck to have scored more goals. 

UP-Tuks is in the lucky position that they got a “Factor X” in Chinedu Okolo. The engineering student seems to have perfected the art of using his "head" at crunch moments. Which is why he is currently one of the team’s top goal scorers, having already headed two balls into the back of the net.

Kickoff is at 18:15.