To all the supporters and the media who want me to begin today’s encounter by talking about Orlando Pirates defeat at the hands of Golden Arrows on Saturday, or anyone wanting to speak to me about the Soweto derby on Saturday come and see me on Thursday.

Firstly, with Pirates losing we do have the opportunity to smile because it shows that they can be beaten and secondly, the fact that they dropped points is good news. We cannot dwell on that because we have what could be in terms of the eventual outcome of the championships, a very important few games which we can not afford to slip up in terms of a loss or for that matter draw these games.

I would not like the players to start focusing on the Pirates game, as we have an equally important game against Classic on Wednesday night. Classic showed us that they are no pushovers during our last sixteen Coca Cola Cup game on Saturday; they gave us a tough game and pushed us all the way.

We played better on Saturday and we were good for the victory, the players were happy and we now look forward to the next round of the competition. I felt that all the players did their part – the two earlier substitutions of David Mathebula and Scara Ngobese paid dividends.

David took an accurate free kick which lead to our second goal and Scara did what we needed him to be and that was to be a menace to the opposition. He created space for himself and made two excellent attempts at goal and he really made the goalkeeper work hard. We took some of our chances early on and it relieved pressure on us late in the game.

I still do feel that we were wasteful in attack - David Obua had an easy opportunity on the stroke of half time, which he failed to convert -there were a few other chances towards the end of the game. I think that game-by-game we have been showing signs that we can finish off our opponents early on.

Now on to the quarterfinals of the Coca Cola Cup, I don’t think any body could have predicted a more telling match up than us against Cosmos. If both teams put their war words on the back burner - I think it will turn out to be a very enthralling and exciting game. We know what we want - to put one over them after losing to them in the 2002 final and after drawing with them recently.

Having said that I do think that we got off lightly with what we can describe as a favourable draw, if you look at some of the other quarterfinal match up’s. Confidence is high in the team at the moment and most of the players feel that we can successfully retain our title taking into account a range of factors including other results and the latest performances of some of our rivals.

I will address you all on Wednesday with further developments in the team, with it been closer to our game against Classic. From Wednesday at 22h30 we can start focusing all our attention and energy on Orlando Pirates.