Orlando Pirates striker Ndumiso Mabena has rated his Bucs return positively despite not getting much game-time so far.
The 35-year-old joined the Buccaneers in December but had already trained with the club for a few weeks after his departure from Royal AM by mutual consent.
Mabena was already at Pirates between 2009 and 2014, winning five trophies, including two back-to-back league titles.
He has now explained that his return to the club shouldn’t just be judged by the numbers of games played, because he also helped the team to prepare for the MTN8 final and during their poor run of form in the beginning of the year.
“I think I’ve done very well ever since I got back. Especially when I got back, we were playing the MTN8 final, whereby I had to share my experience since I’ve played the finals,” Mabena said.
“I think it helped a lot, and by so saying, I think even when we started losing our games after we won the trophy and we sit as players and discussed to say what is it that we doing wrong and what is it that we are doing right.
“What is it that we doing wrong and we were not doing before we won the MTN8, after that we started to get the positive results.
“I think with that experience that I’ve putted to some of the players that are still new in the team and with the players that I’ve got here which have experience in the team they also helped me to give those young ones a little bit of knowledge in the the team and how are things done in the team. What is it that is expected to us as a team.”
Mabena also insisted that Pirates will do their best to end Chiefs’ four-match winning run in the derby.
“We are happy with the positive results that we’ve been getting in the recent games, I think it’s a morale boost for us going to this game,” he continued.
“But we know very well they’ve lost three games in a row, they’ve won four derbies in a row but we wouldn’t want it to be the fifth one so that they can make a record against us,”
“We wanna break that record as well so there’s a lot at stake.
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“It’s gonna be a very difficult game for us but we playing for pride, for our fans and families, and Orlando Pirates as a family.”