Benni rant did the trick for City

Benni McCarthy said he had to give his Cape Town City team “a bollocking” at half-time, as they stormed back from two goals down to pull off an astonishing 3-2 win at Bidvest Wits in the Absa Premiership on Saturday night.

The result moved City back to within four points of leaders Mamelodi Sundowns, who McCarthy’s men face in the Mother City tomorrow night, a second meeting of the two sides in six days.

Wits, meanwhile, missed a chance to go top of the table, after Sundowns drew with Bloemfontein Celtic earlier in the day, with Gavin Hunt slamming his side’s defensive errors at the Bidvest Stadium.

City looked dead and buried at the break, as a Thulani Hlatshwayo header and a Gift Motupa penalty put the Clever Boys 2-0 up. But Kermit Erasmus pulled one back just after half-time, Surprise Ralani scrambled home an equaliser, and then Riyaad Norodien hammered in a brilliant free-kick to complete the turnaround.

“At 2-0 down you see a couple of heads drop, but we are not in the business of dropping our heads, there are hundreds of hungry players out there who are free agents, dying for the opportunity, that is what I said (at half-time).

“If we want to be in the top four, the top three, or the top two, or to win the bloody league, we have to compete, no one will hand it to you and I said to them at the moment they don’t look like a team in the top four.

“It was a bollocking as usual, we were lethargic … we didn’t capitalise on two early chances, a few players dropped their heads a bit, then we dropped our intensity to training intensity … in the second half I asked for more urgency.”

Hunt, meanwhile, bemoaned two penalty decisions that did not go his side’s way at 3-2 down, but also condemned his side’s defending.

“They had three chances and scored, we went at it all the time, we created more chances and the score could have been 8-3, but our defending was bad.

“We were in control of the game, there was no danger, then they scored 30 seconds after halftime thanks to a mistake from us, then we made another mistake, and we have had more free-kicks scored against us than anyone else. We have to defend better, it has been a problem in the second round, we haven’t defended properly, we have got leads and conceded too many goals from individual errors.

“We had two penalty shouts, but this is what happens in football. We are conceding goals and we have four or five Bafana Bafana defenders at the back,” added Hunt, admitting he took off Buhle Mkhwanazi because “he made two mistakes.”

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