Good MonDay to you
It's a definate case of a point being gained in a very difficult away game. A slightly positive result that I had expected, anything else my head would be burried somewhere unbeknown to the rest of human kind. But as it is, I am now saved by that last minute equaliser from Ncaca. A thunderous strike from outside the box, well timed, well executed and well placed shot. Well done Gareth, and the assist deserve equal mention. And I can gaurantee you I would not have been the only one to find relief in our second goal, look no further than our coach.
You can look at my Friday blog and I mentioned already that the Zulu kingdom now just uses their spears for decorative purposes. It looked to me, with Mangoba Mnithi on board, they had cleaned them up this weekend and tried hard to bring every Bird in the sky down. Fortunately for us, I think those spears have just gone blunt and we flew just a tad higher than we did against the Cape side in recent times.
There's something about our perfomances that I can't put my finger on. Amazulu's first goal came against the run of play dominated by Swallows. We had a neat passing game around the tenth minute that resulted in a shot by Leonard straight at the Amazulu keeper. If someone has keept count of those passes, please let me know at upthebirds@gmail.com. It was magically to watch that type of football in the local scene and something to be used as a yardstick for future perfomances. But almost immediately after that we conceded. A combination of comic defending by our team and some neat work from Amazulu, cleanly put away by Dlamini on the 12th minute.
Their second goal was another combination of our amateurish defending and a white Zulu warrior showing our defense how to take advantage of opportunities like that in the penalty area. We've got some of the tallest defenders in the PSL and we should not get beaten from a high ball like that, but we are!!!!! I did complain about our midfield combination, so far we have not used the same combination in all of our games. I understand the coach my be trying to find the right one, but how is that going to work if you don't give one combination an extended run to develop their understanding. The only result that we had something close to positive was away to Ajax. Then it was Nergazhe and Ngaca in midfield. And you will agree with me that the introduction of Ngaca brought about a change to our game yesterday. I am not a coach but it seems clear this is the combination that works for Swallows at the moment.
Our equalizer came from none other that Nomvethe. Not surprising and if anyone in that team deserve a goal, its him. At his age, a lot of the young kids would do well to learn from him. He never stop running for the team, dedicated and shows his commitment. His goal was well taken as well following some good passing moves.
Overall, its a slightly positive. But anything more positive than that will require extensive work on our defense. We cannot continue to concede like that (we've conceded in four of our five games so far) if we are to challenge for silverware. Coming back from two nil down is staff of legends. It shows great mental strength and long may this develop, Not the coming from behind, the mental strength.
Our midweek game against the Other team has been postponed, so we have enough time to gather our thoughts and prepare for Ajax in the second leg of the MTN 8.
That's were I leave it today....
Cheers and see you soon
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