The Francistown side lead the FNB Premiership by two points with 12 games played. Quizzed on the secret behind TAFIC's stellar run, Chinyemba said: “I think we have young hungry players. Most of these players came last season and did not have much game time since it was their first season in the Premier League. Now they are familiar with the league that is why most of them have improved a lot. We also bought young players from the lower divisions who are also hungry to make names for themselves.”
Chinyemba, whose team has 28 points, said he is not worried about tricky fixtures against local powerhouses Jwaneng Galaxy and Gaborone United (GU) who are seen as potential title contenders. “We worry about the performance of the team and not the results. If you put in a good performance, definitely the results will come,” Chinyemba said. Some, if not most TAFIC supporters, are optimistic that Matjimenyenga Boys, has a chance of winning the league if it maintains the same tempo for the rest of the season. “Our mandate from the team management at the beginning of the season was that the team should maintain its premiership status at the end of the season. We are only three points from achieving that. After attaining 31 points, probably the team management will come to us and set new targets,” the coach said.
Chinyemba, who is now famous for wearing the same checkered shirt in all TAFIC games, seemed to have inspired a checkered shirt craze. After TAFIC trounced Flamengo Santos 6-0 at the Francistown Stadium recently, some TAFIC fans said that they will buy checkered shirts similar to Chinyemba’s during the team’s remaining fixtures to honour him for how he has steered their team thus far. In response to the supporters planned gesture, Chinyemba was happy about that saying: “It will be good to see supporters at the stadium wearing the same shirt as mine. I think it will be very exciting.” TAFIC is now scoring goals like nobody’s business this season. It has a positive goal difference of 18 goals, five goals more than the team with the second best goal difference, GU. The team's goal scoring machines, Jean Lwamba is currently the league’s top goal scorer with eight goals followed by Modise Modipe, also known as ‘Top Zuba’, who has five goals. The latter is currently enjoying a rich vein of form. Modipe scored a hat trick against Santos and previously bagged a brace against another potential title contender, Township Rollers.
Asked about Modipe’s current form, Chinyemba said: “Our team is creating a lot of chances and our forward players are converting those opportunities. Therefore, it is not surprising that the team is scoring a lot of goals because it creates a lot of goal scoring opportunities.” After he was substituted against Santos, Congolese striker Lwamba seemed to be unhappy probably because he also wanted to score more goals to increase his tally in order to end up winning the golden boot race. Lwamba scored a single goal against Santos to take his tally to eight goals. When quizzed about Lwamba’s reaction after he was substituted, Chinyemba said: “To me he did not seem to be unhappy. I do not talk to my players after I substitute them. I just congratulate them after the game.”
