Highbury will bounce back from first defeat

Highbury’s first defeat in the Motsepe Foundation Championship this season was tough to take, but his players will regroup and come back stronger, coach Kabelo Sibiya said.

The Yellow Nation lost 2-1 to Leicesterford City away at the Dobsonville Stadium at the weekend.

Sibiya said his players had learnt from Friday’s defeat and he had urged them to move on and concentrate on their next match against log-leaders Casric Stars on Friday.

He is confident his troops will bounce back to their winning ways.

The setback has seen the Yellow Nation drop from third to fourth on the log with 12 points from seven matches.

City’s win pushed them up to third spot on the log with 13 points from seven games.

“We are fourth now on the log, but we are still within the competing [for promotion] position. We really want to be there up until the last day,” Sibiya said.

“We want to be there, we want to be in the chasing pack, and we believe that we have what it takes to do that.

“To be honest, out of the seven matches we played this season, there was one match where the opponents scored first, and we have scored in all seven matches of this season.

“So, we are on the right track, and we believe we will bounce back.

“The sooner we win, the better.”

Reflecting on their loss to City, Sibiya said everything was smooth sailing in the first half — they scored first, but City came back in the second half and scored the two goals.

“I believe we started the game well. We kept the ball in the first half, we created chances in that first half, and we scored.

“We went to halftime, and we were leading.

“When we returned for the second half, we addressed the defensive errors that we discussed at halftime.

“Some of the performances in defence were not what we are used to. So we ended up conceding two goals.

“Later, we also conceded a penalty. I think we could have done better in that situation — if they were calm enough, that penalty would not have happened.

“We ended up losing the match 2-1, our first loss of the season. One will just take the lesson out of that loss.

“Even though we did not give our best football, we did try our best to get a win.

“But, ja, it’s football. Some days you have to try and grind out a result even when you are not playing well on the day.

“We will have to go back and analyse what went wrong and quickly rectify and focus on Casric Stars,” the coach said.

The Herald