On winning the Carling Knockout
We are very proud of the club as a whole for winning the Carling Knockout against TS Galaxy, we are excited and pleased for the players because they worked really hard to achieve this. They really committed to and deserved what they got this past weekend, which is winning a trophy. In summary, it’s a proud moment for me as a coach and Stellenbosch FC as a football club. After getting knocked out in the semifinal of the Nedbank Cup last season, I kept on telling the players that we were unlucky last season. We were also knocked out in the quarter-final of the MTN8 by Kaizer Chiefs on penalties. Sekhukhune United knocked us out on penalties in the Nedbank Cup. This season we couldn’t advance to the MTN8 final after losing on the away goal rule to Orlando Pirates. I kept telling the players that we must keep knocking on the door and keep putting ourselves in these positions, and by doing that eventually we will win a trophy. I think it’s been good perseverance and resilience also, the ability to bounce back after those setbacks. In the Carling Knockout, we went out one step further and got into the final and the message to the players was, “Now that we are in the final, we might as well go ahead and win it.” Consistency, perseverance and resilience paid off. In the final, I thought we played well and when we got that Fawaaz Basadien red card, we were derailed a little bit because Fawaaz is one of our penalty takers – his name was on the list. At that time, there was not much time left before the end of extra time, so we had to readjust our thinking and our planning in terms of the penalty takers. So ja, the red card did derail us a little bit. Our first penalty, which we missed, was a little bit of a concern because you don’t want to miss the first penalty, especially after the opposition had scored. I was a bit concerned and maybe thought: “Here we go again, another penalty shootout lost.” But we practised over the few months in all the cup tournaments from the Nedbank Cup, MTN8 and Carling Cup – we’ve been involved in a lot of cup matches and practising a lot of our penalties. Even though I was concerned after the first miss, I knew that we were well-prepared. I was quite confident that we were going to win the penalty shootout but obviously needed them to miss, which they did. In the end, it all worked out well for us.
On the spine of the team
