Orlando Pirates managed to keep their hopes of winning the Absa Premiership alive when they defeated a gutsy Free State Stars at Ellis Park on Saturday night.
It was a winning return to their home ground which has undergone renovations for June’s Confederations Cup.
Ellis Park hosts the opening Confederations Cup match between Bafana Bafana and Asian champions Iraq on June 14.
Pirates move to 34 points — six behind leaders and defending champions SuperSport United — who early on Saturday night beat Ajax Cape Town 2-0 at the Super Stadium. This was Stars’s first defeat in 2009 and only their second since Steve Komphela joined the club late last year as co-coach with Themba Sithole.
The rain soaked pitch did not help the flow of the game. The only goal was netted by Siphelele Mthembu in the 57th minute.
But it was the visitors who adapted quicker and better to the slippery pitch and outplayed Pirates in an entertaining first half. Stars had five corners in the first 45 minutes and Bucs one. It took 35 minutes before the goal-shy Buccaneers got their first shot on target.
Some great goalkeeping from Moeneeb Josephs kept Bucs in the game early in the first half as Stars launched wave upon wave of early attacks in which the Bucs defence struggled to contain.
Josephs — heavily criticised for a goalkeeping howler that helped Moroka Swallows defeat Pirates 2-1 at Rustenburg’s Olympia Park last weekend — was the hero this time round. He made three superb saves in the first 12 minutes. His first came after four minutes when he denied former Pirates striker Paulus Masehe by turning the former Buccaneer’s shot for a corner.
Two minutes later Josephs saved his side again when he palmed a blistering left-footed free kick from Rueben Cloete over the crossbar.
Then in the 12th minute the Bucs keeper managed to block a close-range header from Masehe.
In the 35th minute Bucs got their first shot on target when keeper Kennedy Mweene did well to stop Teko Modise’s free kick from outside the penalty area.
Bucs nearly sneaked a goal against the run of play when Mthembu managed to latch on to a well directed cross form Lucky Lekgwathi, but his shot was deflected for a corner. Mweene then did well to save a header from Distin Makita.
Pirates coach Ruud Krol must have read the riot act to his players at the interval as it was a different looking Bucs that played in the second half.
There was a lot more urgency and the home side seized the initiative. Bucs’s Malawian midfielder Josephy Kamwendo was wasteful with two chances he created in the opening three minutes. On both occasions he was hopelessly wide when he should have at least hit the target.
Modise was fractionally wide in the 50th minute as Bucs showed more urgency.
Two minutes later Bucs’s defender Lucas Thwala, the club’s leading goal scorer with five goals so far, tried the impossible when he hit the side netting from a difficult angle when he should have crossed the ball to three waiting teammates.
The pressure paid off in the 57th minute when Modise threaded an inch-perfect cross to Mthembu, who made no mistake with a clinical finish.
Two minutes later Kamwendo forced Mweene to make a good save off a well-struck shot.
Josephs was Bucs’s man of the match and brilliantly saved a pile driver from Prince Olomu in the 72nd minute. He then did well to block another Cloete free kick in the 80th minute. The Bafana keeper had a point to prove and he did it by playing a big role in this important win. – Sapa