Defeated Tornado to go back to drawing board

Tornado suffered their third loss this season when they were outplayed 2-1 by PE Stars at the Sisa Dukashe Stadium at the weekend.

The Mdanstane-based outfit has since dropped to second place on the log with 38 while Stars have climbed to third position with the same amount of points.

Tornado coach Tshepo Motsoeneng took a swipe at his players for not giving their all during the game.

“I think we were naive; like the second goal we conceded which was a diagonal ball.

“I mean we’ve played here before and we did the same thing, such as if it didn’t happen before to us,” he said.

“Now you have to wonder – you give a team talk and through training simulate what the opposition is going to do, but when it’s crunch time, your players are sleeping – what do you say as a coach?

“Player by player – we just didn’t push hard enough and I don’t think we gave it our all.

“But we’ll go back to the drawing board. We are humbled by this result, because after three good results, we lost and we knew we were never going to win all games.”

Motsoeneng said the NU2 venue was another stumbling blocking for good football to be played.

“It’s like someone said, ‘take the field and play’. The grass is not cut hence it was difficult to play flowing passes and whatnots.

“But at the end of the day, Stars showed more character and worked hard for it and took it away. However I felt we could have stolen it too.

“And whoever is on top of the log is leading with two points and if we could have stolen a point here, things would have been much better,” he said.

This undesired result means Tornado have to start playing catch-up if they still want to compete for the league title.

“Next week we are playing Mthatha Bucks and we have to come out and that’s where we are going to need character.”

Motsoeneng said his latest young gun, Freddie Hlalele, who is a former Orlando Pirates MDC player, made a very important addition to his side.

“I’m happy with Freddie. He looks hungry and that’s the kind of player you want in your team to carry things and from this I think we can be building something.

“But as a team we need to do introspection and say we are hungry enough to fight for this league.”

He admitted they were lacking fire power in the striking department and they were looking to bolster the team this week.

“We’ve lost [Kefuwe] Siyoko through a red card and I know we are thin in the striking department.

“We have a boy coming from AmaZulu MDC – he’s a top striker there.

“We have another boy from the Free State-based Super Eagles – he’s going to help as well, and we’ll have a centre midfielder. We didn’t have Simphiwe Dlamini, Lolo Mhlakaza, so it looked like we didn’t have a team.

“But we hope everyone will be back for the Mthatha Bucks game.”

PE Stars coach Duran Francis said he watched a tough game, but added he was delighted with the three points away from home.

“We scored two early goals and suddenly the game changed and they chased us. It showed Tornado is a quality side. They are not the defending champs for nothing.

“But credit to our players because they took the lead on their own here.”

We are humbled by this result, because after three good results, we lost