The coach of Black Leopards, Mr Kostadin Papic, believes that his team is ready to absorb the heat for the new season.

According to him, the team is now doing what he described as the “final touches” before the activities for the new season start.

As part of their preparations for the new life in the National First Division (NFD), Black Leopards were conducting trials for young players during the past month. Papic revealed that about 700 talented players from all around the province tried their luck during the trials. According to him, they had selected 40 players from the pool and they wanted to trim to the group to 10 players. He mentioned that one thing that he had discovered was that there was a lot of talent in the Limpopo Province. “I must be honest with you; it was not easy to select the 40 players from a pool of about 700 excellent players,” he said.

He indicated that they will play four friendly matches in the next two weeks in a bid to put the newly recruited players to the test. He further indicated that they were forced to release a large number of their seasoned players recently as a way of complying with the rules and regulations of the league, which dictate that NFD teams must feature at least five U/23 players at a time in all matches.

Papic further stated that it was not easy for them to let the highly experienced players go, but rules were rules and they must be complied with. “We could not keep players that we knew we were not going to utilize, hence the radical decision to let them go,” he said.

Although he was reluctant to disclose the names of the players who had made the grade in the trials, Limpopo Mirror was reliably informed that some of the young talent whose deals with Lidoda Duvha had already been signed and sealed included Marks Munyai (from Rospa United), Hulisani Mathugana (Phungo All Stars), Ivan Mahangwahaya (Phungo All Stars) and Khumbudzo “Shavy” Muvhango from Maweja Takers.