Orlando Pirates failed to live up to their ambitions of making history by becoming the first team to beat a rampant Kaizer Chiefs this season.
Amakhosi’s well-oiled machine played like a rabid dog and was all over a duckling Buccaneers in this Absa Premiership match, leading to a 2-0 victory for Chiefs in a packed FNB Stadium.
The capacity crowd prompted one sports scribe to remark: “I am sure wherever [Irvin] Khoza and [Kaizer] Motaung are, they are smiling to the bank and wishing this derby could be the only game of the league, playing week in and week out.”
Even the two derby teams fail to raise a handful of supporters when they play other teams. They only manage to fill the stadium when it’s a derby game. Besides the three points at stake, the other advantage of the derby is that it gives fans of the winning team bragging rights for the rest of the first leg of season until another derby comes in the second and final leg.
In the first half of the match, both teams played cautiously although Chiefs had an upper hand. They lifted up their game as Siphiwe Tshabalala tapped in one of his easiest goals of his footballing career in less than 10 minutes of resumption of the second half.
When everybody had written a 1-0 victory for Chiefs, substitute and former Pirates player Siphelele Mthembu added insult to the Pirates injury by tapping in yet another soft goal in the referee’s optional time of four minutes.
This sent the Chiefs fans into a frenzy, prompting Baxter to remark at the post match press conference that, “When the team loses, the coach is crap, when it wins, the players are great.”
Pirates stand-in coach Eric Tinkler believes his players have not yet recovered from the tragic death of their goalkeeping captain, Senzo Meyiwa. “I believe the players are still not 100 percent mentally fit as yet after the tragic loss of Senzo, as this could be seen in their scrappy play,” he told the press conference.
