‘This draw feels like a defeat,’ says Leopards coach after letting Chiefs off the hook

Black Leopards coach, Dylan Kerr feels his team could have easily registered their second win of the season in their 2-2 draw at Kaizer Chiefs on Wednesday evening.

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Lidoda Duvha had a brilliant start to this DStv Premiership clash and were 2-0 up within 21 minutes, with Ovidy Karuru completing a rare brace.

But they let it slip away in the second half and Amakhosi equalised and ensured the spoils were shared.

“It feels like a defeat because I thought when we kept the ball, we caused Chiefs a lot of problems and they couldn’t deal with it. But more often than not, we made the wrong pass, we didn’t hit them in good areas. We gave the ball away in areas that allowed Chiefs to gain momentum,” said Kerr in a post-match media conference.

Kerr added that he had warned his players at half time that Chiefs would come back baying for blood and that they needed to score a third goal and kill the game off.

“I thought we wasted a few more chances in the first half even after we went 2-0 up by trying to going down the middle, but that’s something we can work on. I thought the application in the first half was absolutely first class, at half time I told them that at 2-0 we have to make sure we don’t lose the ball in the middle areas.

“Chiefs need to score and they will put us under pressure. But it is exactly what happened, we played a blind pass in the centre, just on the D-line. Okay, we’ve lost the ball there, but they have got about 40 metres to go before they could score and we can deal with the first ball (but it didn’t happen).

“I felt we defended well until at least the last three corners. We didn’t have a defender to take responsibility and go and win that ball. I had told them at half time that if you let the ball bounce in our box, the striker will gain an advantage because he wants to score.”

The English mentor said he had been very thorough on addressing such issues at training and he would have to continue working on them.

“We have to defend better. I am thorough on these things, they have got to listen and play the game right and kill the game off when we have the chance.

“Karuru was fantastic and he scored two goals but I think he will be disappointed that he couldn’t finish the game off especially when he went one-on-one with the keeper and could have made it 3-0 and killed the game.”

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