Bafana Bafana captain Itumeleng Khune believes that they were unlucky to have lost 2-1 to Ethiopia in a 2014 World Cup qualifier on Sunday.
The result brought an end to Bafana's dreams of heading to Brazil next year, but Khune says that the squad could not have given more than they did.
"Congratulations to the home team, they played well. We also came here and played well. We gave it our all, you can't ask for more than what we gave. Things didn't go our way," he said.
"Playing away from home, I hope people from back home saw what was happening here. Their goalkeeper kept going down, their ball boys kept throwing the balls away from the goalkeeper. For me, when we are playing at home, when I do that I get criticised from our own supporters. It's not easy away from home.
"We came here, we gave it our all, we were just unfortunate not to have wrapped it up. Scoring first away from home was what we wanted. They got one chance in the first-half and they put it at the back of the net.
We couldn't regroup after that. In the second-half we gave away free-kicks, which the coach told us not to, and unfortunately our own player headed the ball into our net. We were just unlucky..."