Bartlett laments poor officiating following TTM defeat

Speaking ahead of Cape Town Spurs’ Motsepe Foundation Championship clash against Black Leopards this weekend, coach Shaun Bartlett expressed his disappointment following a crucial refereeing decision in the Urban Warriors 1-0 loss to TTM. 

In finding the back of the net deep into stoppage time, the officials ruled the effort as offside, which came as a shock to the Spurs technical team. Bartlett lamented the decision which ultimately affected the outcome of the game. 

While Bartlett mentioned that the ref’s call has to be the main talking point of the game, Spurs will now shift their attention to Leopards on Saturday.

“Very disappointed to say the least, with the result against TTM,” Bartlett said. “I thought our play in the first half was too slow, lacked energy and our tempo of play weren’t good enough.

“Second half we came out with a little bit more intention, high tempo, had a good chance to go one nil up. But unfortunately we missed that and two minutes later they go and score.

“Suddenly we started playing our normal football, created opportunities but the main talking point of this particular game will have to be the disallowed goal.

“The assistant referee gave an offside which clearly wasn’t offside, it was not an offside offence and again, disappointing in a sense where its the second time now in a space of five days to be honest where we had a penalty overturned against us (against Venda) and now a goal disallowed. 

“Its going to be crunch time on Saturday in Venda against Black Leopards and we’ve got to get our minds back to this particular game and forget about TTM, learn from this mistakes and learn from what happened in that particular game.

“We’ve got to come up with a game plan to get three points and possible get us into the top five to give us a good opportunity in competing come second round.”