Hunt’s men pay the penalty
WITS BLOW CHANCE IN SHOOTOUT Club now drop into play-offs for the Caf Confederation Cup.
An air of dismay was palpable at Bidvest Stadium on Saturday evening, after Wits had missed a fantastic opportunity to qualify for the group stages of the Caf Champions League.
A year earlier, the Clever Boys had tumbled out at the same stage of the competition on their home ground, but a narrow defeat to Egyptian superpower AlAhly was, if frustrating, hardly an embarrassment against the eight-time winners of the African continent’s most prestigious cup competition.
Here, Wits were favourites to overcome Angolan champions Primeiro de Agosto. But even though Gavin Hunt’s side won the second leg 1-0, through a fine strikeby Elias Pelembe, levelling the tie at 1-1 on aggregate, they were awful in the penalty shootout, missing their first three spotkicks.
Even though Darren Keet saved two of Primeiro’s penalties, Angolan striker Geraldo kept his cool to send Primeiro into the next phase.
“You can stand all day and score at training, but (in the shoot-out) the goalkeeper gets bigger and the goals smaller,” said Hunt, after Lehlohonolo Majoro, Pelembe and Daine Klate had all failed to score from the spot.
“I said our goalkeeper (Keet) would save one or two, he is a good penalty saver, and he saved two, but you can’t miss your kicks like that.”
Even in normal time, missed chances haunted Wits over the two legs.
“It was the same as the first game, we had good opportunities, but it is just that bit of quality that we didn’t have over the two legs and you get punished,” added Hunt.
“We are out of the league (Absa Premiership) and out of the Nedbank Cup, this was a great op- portunity to have a go in another area.”
Wits now drop into the playoffs for the group stages of the Caf Confederation Cup, but Hunt said he would leave it to the club to decide their ambitions in that competition.
“I will go with the mandate of the club. Whatever the club wants to do, I will do,” said the Wits coach.