Tinkler wants to see more killer instinct
Maritzburg United went to Polokwane City looking for three Absa Premiership points and a confidence-booster ahead of Saturday’s Telkom Knockout final, and they got it with Yassuf Jappie’s spot kick in the second half enough to seal the win at the Old Peter Mokaba Stadium on Sunday afternoon.
The Team of Choice’s display, however, didn’t impress coach Eric Tinkler (above), who fielded a changed side, with one eye obviously on having a fresher team for this weekend’s crunch final against Mamelodi Sundowns at the Moses Mabhida Stadium in Durban.
Tinkler rested goalkeeper Richard Ofori, midfielders Dylon Classen, Daniel Morgan and defenders Kwanda Mngonyama and Bandile Shandu. While the win will get the team buoyed ahead of the final, Tinkler was left with some work to do to get a chance of winning the club’s first ever trophy.
“We came up against a wounded lion today. And the problem in that first half was that we didn’t take advantage of that fact. I thought we had a lot of possession in the first half and it was very easy for us to go through their lines and getting behind them. But the final pass was very, very poor. The decision-making was also very, very poor. We spoke about it at halftime so you know the performance they put on in that first half. We should really have punished them and we didn’t, we let them off the hook and the danger of that is that they can come back as they start growing into confidence and we could find ourselves in trouble,” said Tinkler after the match.
He said some basic individual mistakes and poor decision making when in attack had him on the edge of his seat in the dugout.
“In the second half again we started okay, started to create more opportunities. When you get the goal you should get the second and the third and we had those choices. We needed to really kill off the game but we didn’t and nearly gave it away.
“The decision-making needs to be better. That’s why it’s nerveracking for me to sit on the bench and watch that because it’s individual errors and basic errors that obviously let us down today,” he said.