Johannesburg - Wits coach Gavin Hunt bemoaned a lack of regular Premiership action and the first international break of the season for his team’s stop-start performance against AmaZulu on Friday evening.
Goals either side of half-time from Thulani Hlatshwayo and Maliele Pule helped the Clever Boys to a comfortable 2-0 win over Usuthu, who find themselves rooted to the bottom of the league standings.
“You could see we haven’t played for two weeks, we looked a little bit rusty,” Hunt said after the game at Bidvest Stadium.
Despite reaching the semi-finals of the MTN8 and enjoying two additional games since the break for international action, Hunt admitted his team looked far from their best.
A hat-trick of defeats to Orlando Pirates, most recently in the Premiership, did little to please the former SuperSport United coach.
But a fourth league win of the season against a hapless AmaZulu side gave Hunt more to smile about.
“We were giving the ball away in easy, controlled, areas and we tried to play the short stuff through the midfield,” he said.
“It doesn’t work, you have to play with a little bit more width. When we played with more width we were much better.”
The win took the Students into third spot, ahead of Pirates, who have the chance to re-claim the position when they take on Chippa United on Saturday.
Meanwhile, Craig Rosslee, who cut a lonely figure pitch-side, admitted his troops never looked like winning.
“We didn’t play the ball the way we wanted to. We wanted score first but once again we were chasing the game,” said Rosslee, who was once coached by Hunt.
“It’s not good enough with the discipline. We’re giving goals away cheaply. The planning is there but if we’re not going to pick up the players, they’re going to score.”
Sapa