In a heartening baptism to Premier League competition, Port Elizabeth club Bay United held Moroka Swallows to a 1-1 draw at a sparsely-filled Olympia Park in Rustenburg on Saturday afternoon.
But with the Birds looking lame and tame for most of the opening period and going down 1-0 through an opportunist 38th minute goal from Lizo Genu, it was not a performance that left Swallows’ Brazilian coach enamoured.
”The players started the game with little focus on the task at hand,” said Leal afterwards, ”and this was not what we were looking for against a team new to the top division and playing away from home on top of it.”
Leal said he planned to put pressure on Bay United through the foraging play of the Swallows’ full-backs — ”but it simply never happened that way”.
”And we did not repeat the kind of form we showed in the second leg of the MTN8 semifinal against Kaizer Chiefs on the same ground.”
It was only after going down a goal that Swallows’ lifted the tempo in what was generally an unimaginative game and ultimately equalised through an immaculately-timed header from Morgan Shivambu.
But despite enjoying almost 70% possession, Swallows lacked the punch and panache to gain the three points they badly needed in order to launch their Premiership campaign in a manner in keeping with the club’s pre-season boast to ”rekindle the old glory days”.
The bustling Sandile Ndlovu did get the ball into the net on a couple of occasions, but Swallows’ jubilation was cut short when the striker was ruled off-side. – Sapa