Posted in News on Apr 18, 2006.
We began our planning and preparations for our penultimate league game of the season against Silver Stars this weekend with two unusually longer training sessions on Tuesday. At the moment I think more people are concerned with our ABSA Cup semifinal match up against Sundowns after Tuesday afternoon’s draw.
Before we get to Sundowns, let us go through the Black Leopards game, I felt that we really did not play at a standard that we can be happy about. We once again fell short of converting the chances that we created. My feeling is conservatively, that had we had taken a few of the easy chances that fell our way we could have won that game 4-0.
In the end we got the result that we needed, even though winning the game via a solitary spot-kick was not the way we envisaged winning the game. There is a lot we have to improve on before we face Sundowns, and to tell you the truth I was very happy when the information came to me that we will be playing against Sundowns in the semifinals.
If a team feels that they are the best team around, then you need to prove it by winning against those who claim to be better than you. For us, we enter this game as underdogs and we are only too happy to go in as such. Sundowns are the form team around and they will be very difficult to beat.
Sundowns have a strong team and would not be leading the PSL race if they were not a quality outfit. On our end we are really not fazed by the fact that we will be playing against Sundowns because when the draw for the round of thirty two was made not many people gave us any chance of beating SuperSport.
Here we are at the semifinals and from here we need to convert our position into the ABSA Cup. Losing at this stage of the competition is not a proposition for us. We will work hard in our preparations for Sundowns and will not leave anything to chance.
We do have confidence in our abilities and we know that we can beat them. Earlier in the year we did mange to beat them, and we want to prove that result was not a fluke and we will want to repeat that performance when we meet them at the end of the month.
On to something else, I was very disturbed to read a newspaper article where a Black Leopards official said that the penalty we got against them should not have been given and that they were cheated. I really cannot understand where that person learnt the rules of the game of soccer. If you saw the game - it was clear to see that Louis was pulled down by the defender.
As far as I know, shirt pulling and throwing someone to the ground is a penalty offence. The thing is that just before we got the penalty - David Mathebula was fouled and the referee waved play on. We were hard done by but we lived with it and prior to that Arthur Zwane was also brought down and I felt we should have been given a penalty which did not come. Anyhow I think you get my point. I am saying that they should not be complaining because the penalty that was given was a legitimate offence and it was only correct for the referee to point to the spot.
Yours to the Finals
Ernst Middendorp
