Sirino missed this past weekend’s friendly match against Marumo Gallants as he is recovering from an injury and Nabi says his absence was hugely felt.

He’s hoping to have him available on Saturday night at the Peter Mokaba Stadium in Polokwane, against SuperSport United.

"You will notice that we actually felt the absence of Sirino in our last game. So, it shows the importance of that player in our team winning, maybe he's not fully recovered but we are at least trying to count on him in the next game,” Nabi said.

“He won't maybe play the whole 90 minutes but we'll see how long we can give him on that game.”

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With their international players also returning from different assignments with their national teams, Nabi is also concerned about the conditioning of some of them, particularly Eddison Castillo, who only returns this afternoon, and Bafana Bafana Rushwin Dortley, who appears to be injured.

"It is always interesting to have certain players in your team to be part of the national team and I'm sure also there are other players in our team that will have the opportunity to represent the national team,” he added.

“But having a game that is so close to their return from the national team that might be a challenge for us because we don't have enough time to give the players to recover and tactically prepare for their upcoming game.

"For instance, we have a player like Castillo who's only arriving today at 3 pm, so we don't know if he's gonna have enough time to recover. Also, I heard that Dortley has an injury so all these issues we need to try and work around them and see how we can include them in the team and prepare for the game."

The Carling KO is the first trophy on offer that Nabi gets to have a taste in, as he tries to end a trophy drought of nine years at the Naturena Village.

The Chiefs fans will be looking at their arch-rivals, where Jose Riveiro won an MTN8 title in his first four months with the Buccaneers.

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