Higher Education Minister Roots For Orbit To Avoid Drop Vs Pirates

The Minister of Higher Education and Training, Buti Manamela, has put more weight on Orbit College's last Betway Premiership clash against Orlando Pirates after delivering a motivational speech at the team's training ground.

Orbit will be playing to survive going into the relegation play-offs in their last league game against title-chasing Pirates on Saturday afternoon at Mbombela Stadium.

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The Mswenko Boys are currently lying 15th in the standings with 24 points, equal on points with Marumo Gallants, who are placed 14th, in a battle to avoid the dreaded relegation-promotion play-offs.

The North West outfit need maximum points against The Buccaneers or at least a draw and hope Gallants don't match their result against Stellenbosch in matches that will be played at the same time, to avoid going into the play-offs.

Manamela gave a motivational speech to the Orbit players, emphasizing the importance of a TVET College staying up in the Betway Premiership to the education department's long-term vision.

"We've never had a college that ultimately got promotion, this is quite big; most of the teams are from the Universities, Wits, Tuks, Stellenbosch but now we have a team from a TVET College, which means a whole lot of students, about more than half a million students in the TVET sector look up to you," Manamela said to the players.

"You put the name of the college on the map, okay, so you must not take that for granted. We were listening to the principal just now, telling us that last year they had about thirteen thousand applications, this year they have fifty thousand.

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"Now, it's not just an accident; you could be one of the contributors to the college being known throughout the country and also TVET being a big thing, because we want to make TVET a big thing, we want to make sure that every young person sees it as a big thing," Manamela said in part, during his address to the players.

Pirates need a win against Orbit to be crowned league champions for the first time in 14 years.