FNB Varsity College, now competing under their new FNB Emeris brand, is gearing up for a familiar challenge as they are preparing to take on the FNB Varsity Cup - just two years after making their debut in the FNB Varsity Shield competition. The Comets topped the 2025 log of the FNB Shield tournament, earning automatic promotion into the FNB Varsity Cup, and then capped off a dream season by beating Madibaz in the final to be crowned Shield champions as well.
Comets coach Jeremy McLaren has come out to admit that the FNB Varsity Cup competition is at a whole different level, but the excitement and momentum in his team are in good condition.
“FNB Varsity Cup has always been the ultimate goal and has a lot of excitement, but also in saying that, it’s a totally new territory for us to be able to understand what the competition would be,” McLaren.
“But again, you train and prepare for the highest level, so I think we’re pretty much excited as a group and as a university.”
The KZN-based team has had weeks of hard preparations, and now with less than a week remaining to their debut match against FNB UJ in Johannesburg, the team are at the point of tying up loose ends in their preparations after a good off-season groundwork.
“I think we had a really good off-season. The challenge is always just to make sure that we believe in ourselves that we can play at this level and obviously coming back now in January and February we do have a little bit of niggles that we just have to fight through and of course this extreme humidity also takes a lot on us so that’s a massive challenge for us at the moment but from a mental perspective it builds us a little bit stronger” added the coach.
McLaren led the team to an incredible title-winning campaign last season in the FNB Varsity Shield; however, the gaffer has cautioned his side of the task at hand, concealing the team's goals for this competition debut but also revealing a bit of their plan, which is to remain levelheaded and take the campaign one game at a time.
“We want to go as far as we can, I mean if you say you want to win it, you might sound arrogant and if we say we want to go into playoffs we might open ourselves up as a target so we just want to take it one game at a time and make sure we get out of the relegation zone and then work from there into playoffs.
“If we have favour, we could then go all the way, but it’s something we need to take day-by-day and see where we find ourselves as a group”, concluded the calm and composed coach McLaren.
Provisional squad (subject to change):
Jacques Marais (c), Anwill Prins, Bradley Moroney, Cade Latham, Chritia Els, Chmani Nxoyi, Dallyn Beukes, Danie Van Huizen, Donell Francis, Dylan Walters, Enzo Van Niekerk, Frederick Marx, Garre Muller, Jonathan Horak, Juan Steyl, Khumo-Etsile Nkutha, Langalihle Dlamuka, Laython Nel, Mambo Mkhize, Mbuso Kweyama, Mignon Stevens, MJ Schoeman, Nkazimulo Mzolo, Okuhlekodwa Meyiwa, Philani Khoza, Reece Curtin, Robert Everson, Sinelifa Ncwana, Sivuyiswe Mpendu, Thabo Njapha, and Wade Williams.