City and Stellies draw some confidence
BOTH Cape Town City and Stellenbosch FC failed to open their new Premiership season accounts with a victory over the weekend, but they will take plenty of confidence from their respective outings for vastly contrasting reasons.
Stellenbosch returned from Soweto with a point after holding Orlando Pirates to a thrilling 2-2 draw, while City played out a dour 0-0 stalemate with SuperSport United at Athlone Stadium on Saturday.
Steve Barker’s Stellenbosch team had struggled to find the back of the net last season, particularly during the final 10 games when all they managed was a single penalty, but all that changed with the first two minutes of the new season when new striker Waseem Isaacs struck home a pile driver from outside the box.
Fellow new signing Judas Moseamedi, who replaced Isaacs in the 51st minute, then followed up the opening goal with a brilliant glancing header of his own in the second half.
“We identified that (killing off games) as a real area where we were lacking last season. And we wanted to improve in that area.
“So, to have brought both (Isaacs and Moseamedi) in and both to be on the scoresheet is fantastic for us,” Barker said.
“They’re two big strikers — they will have to share the load among each other.
“And there might be some days where they’ll both be on the park and hopefully can cause teams problems with their aerial threat and physicality.
“And hopefully it gives others the freedom to play off them. Well pleased with both of them.”
City, meanwhile, were the polar opposite last season as they were hell-bent on playing a free-flowing game that resulted in plenty of goals under former coach Jan Olde Riekerink, but could not find a way to stop the opposition from scoring as many at the other end.
New coach Eric Tinkler has since made reinforcements with the addition of highly-rated Congolese central defender Nathan Fasika and Angolan No 1 Hugo Marques in goal, while also focusing on improving City’s defensive structure by moving Abbubaker Mobara to a new holding midfielder role to shield the back four.
“If I have to take any positives from the game, I will take the fact that we kept a clean sheet,” Tinkler said.
“We had to fight aerially because of the long balls SuperSport were playing to (Thamsanqa) Gabuza and (Bradley) Grobler, but we were well organised, well structured defensively.”
Both teams have precious little time to rest up before their next matches with Stellies hosting TS Galaxy at Danie Craven Stadium on Wednesday, while City travel to KwaZulu-Natal to face newcomers Royal AM.
TS Galaxy played a goalles draw yesterday against Kaizwe Chiefs, whilst Royal AM was beaten by Swallows yesterday in a Premiership encounter.