Cape Town City head coach Eric Tinkler was pleased with his team’s comeback win against Royal AM on Wednesday.
Ndumiso Mabena had put Royal AM ahead early in the game, but second half goals from Mdu Mdantsane and Taariq Fielies sealed the three points for City.
Tinkler says the home team caught them by surprise in the first half, but after making a few adjustments he was proud how his team responded.
“Ja, I think it was a tough, tough match,” Tinkler said after the game.
“I think, you know, we were to a degree caught by surprise in terms of how Royal AM were going to press us, which is what they done in that first ten minute period. We struggled to come out of the build up phase, lost possession, they hit us on the transition, we committed a foul. And from that foul, we switched off, and we conceded the first goal.
“And I think that was obviously disappointing for us to start like that, that wasn’t the plan. We wanted to try and put them on the backfoot. But the opposite happened.
“The positive is obviously we reacted quite well from that, that goal conceded, we didn’t switch off, we switched on. We started to be positive, we started to look to go forward, we look to create opportunities, we put them under quite severe pressure towards the end of the first half.
“But we did leave ourselves a little bit unprotected and vulnerable for the counter. So we spoke about that at halftime, trying to fix that, especially not leaving the door open at the back. But in terms of how we want to penetrate because we didn’t really do that in that first stanza, how we needed to penetrate, change the lines, movement within between the lines, and we saw that immediately, we responded extremely well.
“Start of the second half, create a chance, create a chance, get the goal. And then again, from pressure that we exerted on them we got the second, and I felt that we needed to go and get the third and the fourth, and really finish off the game.
“But I’m very, very proud of the second half performance of the boys, the fight that they showed today. They needed to show a lot of bravery, a lot of guts, a lot of determination and they gave me everything they had. Everybody that came in, we made the full compliment of substitutions, and everybody provided and the team collects the three points.”
