After winning 1-0 against Stellenbosch on Sunday, Marumo Gallants coach Dan Malesela said his team was a bit fortunate, and perhaps already had their mind on Wednesday’s match against Orlando Pirates.
Gallants had to hold on to beat Stellenbosch on Sunday, as the visitors piled on the pressure.
Malesela said it was good that they won, but he felt his team were lucky, and perhaps were already thinking about their Nedbank Cup game against Pirats.
“It’s not a long story, it’s good that we won, but really, we were under pressure,” Malesela told Gallants’ media department.
“It’s the first time that we were under this pressure, but we’ve got to have some of these games, sometimes where we have our off-ish day, and still win.
“But we need to chat, we need to really knuckle down and work sometimes, because our boys to relax. I think our biggest challenge is because we are playing Pirates on Wednesday.
“That’s what I think is our biggest challenge. We were sort of saving ourselves, thinking, ‘I may not play the Pirates game and all of that’.
“But that should not be the case. These league games are important.
“Now we slightly moving away from the bottom teams, and we want to give it away like this? Because we were very lucky to be honest, we were very lucky not to be scored. Very, very, lucky, let’s be honest.
But picking up a third successive league win (fourth in all competitions) did please Malesela.
“It means a lot, it means we’re moving away from the bottom,” he added.
“That means we probably can now look and say how can we challenge at the top? But like I said, we have to be honest, not the best of displays.
“This can be expected, and you can forgive the guys, appreciate the fact that Philip (Ndabayithethwa Ndlondlo) scored, we had a penalty, we push them as well a little bit, like I said they could have scored anytime. It’s fine.”
Gallants host Pirates on Wednesday evening at the Peter Mokaba Stadium.
