Tinkler raves about his players

SUPERSPORT United coach Eric Tinkler was the epitome of cool and calmness after winning his second trophy as a coach at the Moses Mabhida Stadium in Durban on Saturday night.

After his team’s 4-2 penalty shootout win over Cape Town City in an MTN8 final that finished 1-1 after 120 minutes‚ Tinkler hardly showed his delight‚ at least facially.

He described his cup win as a fantastic start to his SuperSport stint and said he was very excited.

But being the hard-working and no-frills coach that we have come to know‚ Tinkler said he was still determined to achieve more with the club.

“Being the type of the person I am‚ I want more. We have another massive game coming up at the weekend and I want us to win it so that we can get to another final.

“Winning trophies must become an addiction and a drug for us. That’s where you major yourself against the best.”

Tinkler’s side will leave on Thursday for Tunisia, where they will meet Club Africain in the second-leg of the Caf Confederation Cup in Tunis on Sunday.

The first leg of the Confed Cup tie finished 1-1 in Pretoria two weeks ago.

Tinkler could not stop‚ though‚ raving and thanking his players for showing “great character‚ great resilience and great determination” to bag the MTN8 trophy‚ which was a first for him within four months at SuperSport.

The win was a sweet one for Tinkler against his former club, which he won his first trophy with‚ ironically playing against his current team in the Telkom Knockout final last season.

Tinkler praised goalkeeper Ronwen Williams for saving Lyle Lakay and Judas Moseamedi’s spot kicks after they literally dragged themselves to penalties when they were forced to finish the match with 10 men due to Thabo Mnyamane’s groin injury.

Mnyamane suffered the injury while cancelling out Sibusiso Masina’s 23rd-minute opener in the 80th minute.

“We had a lot of faith in our goalkeeper Ronwen and we had practised taking penalties during the week. Ronwen was brilliant in saving those penalties‚” Tinkler said.

“We didn’t really finish off the first half that well in my personal view. We obviously had to change our formation in the second half. We brought Sifiso Myeni to try and get ourselves back into the game and we also changed the formation at the back from four to three. And that’s when we got the goal through Thabo Mnyamane.

“But that’s the risk we took. With only about 15 minutes left on the clock, we needed to get ourselves back into the game. And it paid off.”

ý