It’s been seven years in the making, but finally Bloemfontein’s loyal football lovers will witness a CUT-UFS Derby come Thursday afternoon.
When Varsity Football came onto the scene in 2013, CUT looked on as their neighbours, UFS, carried the flag for ‘The City of Roses’.
Three years later, CUT joined in, but UFS were absent due to non-qualification.
So, finally, the two teams are taking part during the same Varsity Football season giving the Bloemfontein faithful their first ever derby.
According to CUT skipper Keitumetse Mabathoana, the long-awaited derby provides an opportunity to rectify the mistakes that led to their undoing against UWC last week.
“There are a lot of valuable lessons we learned from the defeat and we will use them to improve our performance,” Mabathoana tells varsitysportssa.com ahead of Thursday’s clash at their home ground.
“[To ensure victory], we will look to our team work and never [say] die attitude that we showed against the University of KwaZulu-Natal,” Mabathona adds.
Mabathoana, whose return to CUT has so far yielded the decisive second goal and the MTN Moment of Brilliance Award against UKZN, encouraged UFS to “come prepared as we will be playing on our home soil.”
As it happens, his opposite number, Gauta Mokati, claims that he does not view the encounter as an away game: “I don’t consider the game at CUT as an away game because the environment is not foreign to us.”
While mirroring Mokati’s sentiments, Mabathoana has made a clarion call to those who support the blue half of Bloemfontein.
“This requires us to utilise the 12th man [CUT supporters], as they [UFS supporters] are going to come in numbers,” Mabathoana concludes.
You can catch the first ever Bloemfontein derby at CUT Stadium by buying your tickets for just R10 if you use the Varsity Sports App, downloadable from the Apple App Store on iOS devices or from the Google Play store for Android users. Alternatively, it will be broadcast live on SuperSport 4, with kick-off at 16:00.
By Sam Styrax
