Chicken Inn, How Mine struggle

Sport
LUVEVE Stadium seems to have become unfavourable for Chicken Inn as they only managed three wins from eight Castle Lager Premier Soccer League matches they played at the venue this year.

LUVEVE Stadium seems to have become unfavourable for Chicken Inn as they only managed three wins from eight Castle Lager Premier Soccer League matches they played at the venue this year. SUKOLUHLE MTHETHWA SPORTS REPORTER

Teams usually pick up maximum points at their home grounds, but this has not been the case for the GameCocks.

At Luveve, Chicken Inn lost 1-2 to How Mine and lost to Bantu Rovers and Caps United by the same score line before Saturday’s 0-1 loss to high-flying ZPC Kariba. Against Bantu Rovers, the GameCocks were away, but Luveve is their home ground.

Their only wins at home were the 2-1 victory against Chapungu before they bagged three points from a 1-0 win over Chiredzi, having earlier beaten Harare City 3-0 in the season opener. They shared the spoils with FC Platinum in a 2-2 draw at Luveve.

Chicken Inn played two home matches at Barbourfields which saw them collecting a point from a goalless draw against Dynamos before they drew 1-1 with Highlanders.

From a possible 24 points at stake in matches at Luveve they have managed 10 points. They have collected 20 points from 16 games, only five points away from relegation-threatened Chiredzi, Bantu Rovers, Triangle and Harare City.

Chicken Inn coach Joey Antipas yesterday admitted the crisis.

“We have a struggling syndrome at home. We practically play there everyday, but we can’t seem to find the winning formula. Maybe it’s psychological. We are struggling at Luveve, but when we play away from home we get decent results. We can’t get good results at Luveve. It is baffling why we can’t win at home,” he said.

Antipas said he had a serious talk with his players following their loss to ZPC Kariba on Saturday.

“After our game against ZPC Kariba I read the riot act to my players,” he said.

“The players need to come out of their shells and perform. We have got to get our act together so that we achieve something this season.”

He said they were struggling at Luveve and added that they would keep working hard as Chicken Inn had young and experienced players.

He said the return of Mkhokheli Dube was going to add a new dimension to the team and give him options. Dube was away in the United States on personal business and missed a couple of games.

Chicken Inn signed Last Chibwiro on a two-year deal on Friday and it remains to be seen how he will perform.

Meanwhile, results seem to have stopped coming for How Mine.

At some point, How Mine topped the log table, but the team has been dropping crucial points of late.

From a possible 15 points they picked a single point from a goalless draw against FC Platinum at Luveve.

They lost 1-2 to Triangle and lost by the same scoreline to Highlanders before the 0-1 loss to Black Rhinos on weeks 15 and 16. Head coach Philani Ncube said they were hoping results would start coming their way.

“It is that time of the season where a team goes through a bad phase. We are going through that phase. We hope to rectify it before it gets out of hand,” he said.

“We are encouraging the boys so that we start getting good results. We are creating chances, but we are failing to score. We are having a meeting today (yesterday) because we want to talk about the players we want. We want to add about four to five players.”

The mid-season transfer window period closes on Thursday.