De Sa sees hope in his Stars side

Sibongiseni Gumbi

Platinum Stars coach Roger de Sa refused to give his opinion on the standard of refereeing in the local game, although he did mention that his team had conceded suspect penalties when certain match officials were in charge.

“At the end of the day it wasn’t a bad result. When you go into halftime in the lead you need to make it count. But we conceded another penalty. We conceded also in our last game with the same officials in charge,” said De Sa after his team’s 1-1 draw against AmaZulu.

Probed further on the issue, he said: “As coaches, if we talk, we get punished. You guys (the media) must write what you see about the referees. You do the same with players and coaches, if they do not do well, you write so. We can’t be honest because we will get nailed. We have to swallow it.”

De Sa has slowly stabilised the situation at Dikwena since taking over from Peter Buttler who was fired after just three games. He said his contribution in the team has been minimal because of a tight schedule.

“The mood was not great when I got there. The players were down. Cavin (Johnson) had been there for a long time and had set the standard and when the new guy arrived there had been too many changes. When I arrived it was a mess. I had to hit the ground running.

“I arrived a day before a match and my contribution was limited. It has not been that much in the past 13 days because there have not been enough training time. At least now we have a full week before we play Sundowns,” he said.

It could be said that De Sa threw himself from the frying pan into the fire by taking on the Dikwena job as the team were struggling on and off the field with rumours of the club being put up for sale flying around.

“You only get a job when the team is struggling. You can never be hired when they are top of the league. It is how it is. If you don’t get hired during pre-season then your only chance is when things go bad for a team,” said the Stars coach.

“The displays over the past few games have given me hope.”