Swallows coach Truter takes bitter first league defeat in his stride

‘Defeat has no friends’, Steve Komphela once said this and it is always bitter.

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This is why Swallows FC were applauded for their log run without a defeat since returning to the DStv Premiership.

But that run was cut by TS Galaxy on Tuesday evening, with Owen Da Gama’s side launching a late assault to beat Brandon Truter’s Dube Birds 2-1 at Mbombela Stadium.

Swallows had taken the lead early in the second half through Ruzaigh Gamaldien’s penalty conversion. But the Rockets’ veterans, Lindokuhle Mbatha and Bevan Fransman, had the last say with late strikes to turn the result around and in favor of the home side.

“We were in control of the game nicely for 85 minutes. But the last five minutes were rather uncomfortable, they put us under pressure. They pushed five or six players to play up front to force us to react to that,” said Truter after the game.

“And with two moments of madness we got punished but I am still proud of these boys, we played well against a team who do man-to-man (marking) and makes it really difficult for you to play.

“We dominated, and they didn’t have a clue what was going on. We managed everything they threw at us until the 85th minute. I can’t fault the players, they did well. We lost through two individual errors that were due to lack of concentration.

“We will take it, we will keep working and look forward to the next game. We have to put this result behind us as quickly as possible,” added the 47-year-old mentor.

Asked if playing with the tag of being unbeaten was perhaps weighting too heavy on the team, and if getting rid of it could help ease that pressure, Truter admitted to the loss being an eye opener for them.

“I could be. It’s almost exactly a year since we lost a league game, so we look to keep it going against TTM. This might be a wake up call for us,” he said.

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