Bullets Reserves torment Poly
Nyasa Big Bullets Reserves on Wednesday returned to winning ways in style in the 2021 ThumbsUp Southern Region Football Association (SRFA) Premier League after thrashing Polytechnic FC 7-2 at Kamuzu Stadium in Blantyre.
It was a huge relief for the Enos Chatama-coached former champions who settled for a goalless draw against Wizards in their previous league fixture two weeks ago. Reseves’ 12-0 triumph over Neno in their opening fixture remains the biggest victory in the 20-team league so far.
With the latest victory, Reserves have now moved two places up to second place in the five-team Group-A with four points, four behind leaders Wizards who have played four matches. Polytechnic have suffered their first defeat and are a step from the bottom with eight points after starting their campaign with two consecutive draws.
“It feels great to return to winning ways and we are determined to maintain this in our next outings,” Chatama said. “In spite of that, we are not under pressure on the title hunt as our focus is on teaching our boys a spirit of competitiveness”.
On Wednesday, Reserves raced into a 3-0 lead at half-time before adding four more in the second half through Patrick Mwaungulu’s hat-trick plus strikes by Chikumbutso Salima, Alex Tsamba, David Daudi and Frank Mlimanjala.
They could have scored more had it not been for the incredible heroics of Polytechnic’s goalkeeper Steve Edson, who saved two penalties within five minutes.
Polytechnic could not return to their campus at the newly-formed Malawi University of Business and Applied Science (Mubas) empty-handed as they got their consolation goals through Petros ‘Shasha’ Kwenda’s brace in the dying minutes of the match.
“Although we have lost by a big margin, we are happy with how we performed especially in the second half. We will rectify our mistakes ahead of our next fixtures,” said Polytechnic team manager Dave Maluwa.
This season, SRFA has abandoned the league format and embraced a shorter arrangement that sees their 20 Premier Division teams being divided into five groups to play home-and-away matches.
Top-two outfits from each group will engage in playoffs that will produce the semi-finalists before the eventual finalists.
