IT’S NEVER DULL WHEN HUNT IS INTERVIEWED

YOU’VE got to hand it to Gavin Hunt. In a football landscape teeming with coaches too worried about being politically correct, the Bidvest Wits boss is one of few who always tells it like it is.

A beauty queen masquerading as a touchline analyst runs the risk of being embarrassed in full view of the country should they dare ask a stupid question.

Upon putting one to shame last weekend, Hunt typically called a spade exactly that and not a garden tool as he analysed the Clever Boys’ defeat to SuperSport United out at Mbombela Stadium.

“The same player cost us the game again.

“He’s been doing it week-in and week-out,” Hunt lamented.

I found myself taken back to almost two decades ago when Paul Dolezar was coach of Kaizer Chiefs.

The eccentric Frenchman stunned most of us after Amakhosi were forced into a replay of the Rothmans Cup final against Mamelodi Sundowns when Raphael Chukwu scored at the death.

“One minute I thought I had the cup and the million (R1m prize money for the winners) in the pocket, the next minute it is gone. Criminal, that was criminal,” he said of the mistake made by the late Sizwe Motaung to allow Sundowns the equaliser.

In another match against Orlando Pirates during which Doctor Khumalo inexplicably hoofed the ball over the goal from inside the six yard box, Dolezar provided this gem as a response to a TV interviewer’s question about why Chiefs lost.

“Don’t ask me, ask Doctor.” And perhaps rightly so, for many a times coaches end up losing their jobs and being blamed for losses when the players have literally cost their clubs.

Yet as I listened to Hunt last weekend, I found myself thinking he was a bit disingenuous.

Sure, Sifiso Hlanthi was to blame for both the goals they conceded – the Bafana Bafana defender having left Teboho Mokoena unmarked for the first goal and then giving away a silly penalty for the second. Blame him for that coach.

But to say he has been doing it all season is a different story altogether.

You are in charge of deciding the line-up Huntie and if Sifiso has been so costly, why have you continued to give him game time?

Yes, Wits does not have as big a squad as the other championship challengers.

And I do get the one about Hlanthi being an experienced international and senior player at Wits.

But that does not mean he should always get to play, especially not when he has shown a propensity for being as costly as you said he has been.

Admittedly coaches are under immense pressure and often players get away with murder, to the extent that there is this acceptance here locally that players can work a coach out of a job if they want to.

And it is thus refreshing and good when the likes of Dolezar and Hunt point to the facts that fans often choose to ignore, the glaring errors made by players to cost team matches.

But surely a coach cannot be allowed to say a player has cost him matches all season.

Not when he has the power to keep him out of his team.

All that notwithstanding though, give me a Gavin But post match interview anytime – not these other ones who come across as scripted.