Orlando Pirates captain Nkosinathi Sibisi has revealed how he had to raise his voice during the side’s Betway Premiership title chase last season in one of the games in an effort to help them not lose the match against Richards Bay.
The league game in April 2026 came as pressure was mounting on the eventual 2025/26 champions where they conceded in the first half following a mistake by defender Lebone Seema.
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Seema was trying to clear the ball but instead brought the ball game into play where Bay’s Thulani Gumede pounced to grab the lead for his side in KZN. In a change room footage shown on #BucsCamp Part 3 on SuperSport, the skipper shouted saying his teammates needed to play a patient game and not get angry at a defender as though it was his fault alone the goal came.
“Stay in the f****n game, stay in f****n game,” Sibisi shouted as he walked into the dressing room at the break.
“We’ve played a lot of transition. Keep the ball let’s be patient, not every time you get the ball you put the f****n ball in. Calm down. We still have 45 minutes to go man.”
The Bafana Bafana international said in the episode that he was glad to have said something in that moment because he felt his teammates were acting as if they were losing the match they drew 2-2 in the end.
“You know suffering that early setback to concede that goal, because it’s not always easy whenever you’re chasing. And especially playing with the team that’s playing on a counter, because now we are going all out to try and equalize. But now we’re leaving space and gaps behind for them to exploit. Going into half time, we were still trailing, you know, looking for that goal, and I was quite angry.
“The way we were doing things, it was as if we were losing 4-0, you know, we’re chasing the game losing 4-0. I always say I’m a reserved guy, I don’t talk too much, you know, but I could see that the things that we were doing, we were rushing a bit. So, whenever we got the ball wide, we wanted to cross, where we only had [Yanela] Mbuthuma, you know, dealing with four guys.
“It’s not only on him [Seema], the onus is on everyone, but we tried our level best to try and help him in this situation, because I heard the guys screaming to say, Seema you alone. But he took a decision, you know, and it’s not when Seema came at the ball, we conceded. Seema cleared at the ball. There was a duel [Tshepang] Moremi fell. It fell for them. From there went to Gumede, Gumede had a shot, a nice goal.
“What can we do? What can we say? We have to accept those sometimes to say one will make a mistake, but we shouldn’t point fingers to say no this one made a mistake. We all make mistakes. No one is perfect, you know. So, for me, I actually feel bad he feels that way, but I just want to say the onus is on everyone. It’s not only on him.”
“I’m glad that I said something because with how things were I really think that if we had carried on playing the way we were playing, we were going to lose that game.”
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