Chippa United hope improvements to the pitch at the Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium will be completed early next month allowing them to host Mamelodi Sundowns at the Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium on September 12.
Chippa have been forced to host their opening two home games of the season away from the Eastern Cape with the Premier Soccer League ruling the surface at both the Buffalo City Stadum in East London and the Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium in Gqeberha to be unfit to use and in need of maintenance.
Chippa, therefore, hosted Richards Bay at the Dobsonville Stadium in Soweto in their first home game of the new Betway Premiership campaign and took their second home game, against Orlando Pirates, to King’s Park in Durban where they lost 0-3 on Sunday.
They will play their next home game on September 5 against newly-promoted Milford at Dobsonville but then one week later hope to be back in the Eastern Cape,
Coach Brandon Truter said the changes had made the start of the season difficult on his side
“It makes it massively difficult,” he said. “We train, then it's a two hour flight. Once you get off a flight, where you were sitting for a long time, you have to recover.
“So how many times do you really spend on recovery before you work on tactics, before you work on fitness? And then you need to acclimatise coming from the coastal to inland.
“We played in Dobsonville in the rain. Then going from inland to Durban. It's a lot of things we need to look at. So not having a home venue plays a big role, you understand?”
Truter said, however, he was still chasing targets this season, having taken over at the club after a churn of coaches last season.
“The first target is do not go through what we've been through last season,” he said of Chippa’s anxious battle against potential relegation.
“My personal targets … top eight and a cup final. Yeah, that's personal, but from the club side, um, the chairman said we were not to go through this thing again.
“And I think we are right back. It's a good team we assembled. Here and there, we need to reinforce but I'm fairly confident we'll reach the top eight.
“I feel really comfortable that we'll have a say in a cup, either the Carling Knockout or the Nedbank Cup. So yeah, I'm really confident about it,” Truter said.