AmaTuks coach Tlisane Motaung details Nedbank Cup upset against Cape Town Spurs

Relegation-threatened Spurs have become the first topflight team to bite the dust in this season’s Nedbank Cup after they were beaten 1-0 by promotion hopefuls AmaTuks at Tuks Stadium on Wednesday. 

The Tshwane outfit took the lead in the first half through Delano Abraham’s 38th minute penalty, which was enough to secure their passage to the next stage of the competition, and Motaung highlighted how they pulled off the upset.

"Look, of course a difficult match as expected, Cape Town Spurs – in a couple of games I watched – are very deadly going forward with the likes of [Luvuyo] Phewa – I'm not surprised he [was named] Man of the Match, I thought he was causing problems for us," said Motaung.

"But the most important thing was for us to try and deny them [opportunities] to get behind us because we know they are dangerous in terms of those moments.

"So we allowed them to get the ball in front of us and we tried to press in certain moments, so I thought the boys applied themselves very well under difficult conditions against a very difficult opponent."

AmaTuks are currently log leaders in the second tier and are on course for automatic promotion with 11 games to go in this campaign. 

Motaung revealed that they, in fact, rested the majority of their regular players against Spurs with only three of them having featured in the starting line-up.

"I mentioned that we have a squad of 35 [players], and those players need to be given a run, so this was an opportunity for other players to play while resting our regular players," he added.

"In this match, if you look at it, we only started with three players who are regulars in our starting line-up, and the rest were out. 

"We thought we do have enough depth, and we just need to give these boys an opportunity to showcase their talent, and I thought they did themselves justice."

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