SOCCER: Clinton Asary
LOG leaders Kaizer Chiefs face an uphill battle on Saturday when they host Cape Town side Hellenic at the Rand Stadium. Chiefs will looking for revenge after their surprise defeat against Wits in the BP Top 8 final last week.
Hellenic crushed Wits 3-0 in a league game on Tuesday night.
The ”Amakhosi” are unbeaten thus far after three league games but will find the going tough against Hellenic who, after a poor start to the season, have found their feet.
Chiefs were in the same position last season and in the corresponding fixture they were beaten 1-0 by Hellenic, Grant Young scoring the goal.
So far Hellenic have scored eight league goals, with Young (four) and striking partner Gerald Stober (three) at the forefront of the Cape side’s early season challenge.
Young (24) is again in prolific goalscoring form and the powerfully built, balding striker is likely to stand between Chiefs and victory.
He was full of confidence when interviewed this week. ”Hungry, I’m hungry for goals.” Those were the words of Hellenic’s star striker, when asked how he was feeling for the 1995 season.
Back after a brief, but unsuccessful spell in the Belgian first division with Ghent, where it was problems off the field, rather than on it that curtailed his stay, Young is back home and out to reclaim his place in the national squad.
And he could not have had a better start, banging in a hat- trick — the season’s first — against the luckless Real Rovers in his second game for Hellenic.
What made the feat even more remarkable was that, due to a dispute with the club, Young had only been training for a few days.
But he has a reason for his early season sharpness, ”Due to the intense training I underwent in Belguim by the time I left there I was so fit that the lay off here never actually affected me much.”
Earlier Young had been refusing to play for the Cape side after being unable to come to a contractual agreement with Hellenic on his premature return from Belguim. He was so disillusioned with the club that he seriously considered retiring. This led to a mad scramble for the striker’s signature by neighbours Cape Town Spurs and other clubs in the country, including Sundowns.
But Hellenic owner George Hadjidakis, faced with the prospect of losing his goldmine, stood firm amid the barrage, said to have been even greater than the Cape’s notorious south-easter, and said, ”No sale.”
When Young left Hellenic last season the club was in the top two in the league, and Young, along with Stober, was among the top scorers in the country, but after a few games without him the goals dried up for both Stober and Hellenic, resulting in the club struggling in the second half of the season.
While things did not go as planned in Belguim, Young feels that he did benefit from his stint there. ”I’m more composed, my finishing is better and mentally I’m more confident,” he said.
Last season Young sprang to prominence in the game against Kaizer Chiefs, Saturday’s corresponding fixture.
After doing the ”samba” around Lucas Radebe he blasted a ferocious shot past Chiefs keeper Brian Baloyi, to give Hellenic a sensational victory.
Young is out to get his name on the scoresheet again this time, ”I’d like to get a few against Chiefs, and strengthen my claim for a place in the national squad,” he said.
Young, who has one cap for South Africa, coming on as a substitute against Australia in Sydney, was included in the side that was humiliated 4-0 by Mexico, but did not play.
But at that point critics described the striker’s presence in the squad as an attempt by soccer’s hierachy to relieve pressure from Cape soccer fans who were up in arms becaus there were no Cape Town players were in the squad. Surprisingly, Young agrees. ”On that tour things, on which I would rather not elaborate, happened which made me feel the same,” he said .