Stellenbosch coach Steve Barker was left with mixed feelings as former player Iqraam Rayners scored the only goal that decided the match on Wednesday night at the DHL Cape Town Stadium.
The Bafana Bafana international had a good 2023/24 season with Stellies where he scored 15 goals in the Premier Soccer League to finish second behind Orlando Pirates forward Tshegofatso Mabasa who won the Golden Boot with his 16 goals.
The Wednesday game was the first time the 29-year-old was playing against his former team and he made a major impact in favour of Masandawana.
It was a game of two halves but Rayners was clever with his runs
“It was a game of two halves, we didn’t play as we should have in the first half, just one or two execution issues, a bit of decision-making, and a couple of errors,” he told the media.
“We knew a player like [Rayners] is clever with his movement behind. Obviously, we conceded, arguably they could’ve had a second before half-time with a couple of chances that Ribeiro had.
“One of your players you had and reignited his career to get into Bafana Bafana squad, to get into his move that he sort of desire to be at the club like Sundowns scores a quality goal as he does leaves a bit of a bitter taste.”
It becomes frustrating…
Stellenbosch are playing the Caf Confederation Cup, and are currently third in Group B with three points from as many matches. Barker has explained how it is playing continental games and the PSL in the same season.
“Obviously it’s not easy, it’s our first campaign at CAF, and we only arrived on Monday, we not playing at our Stadium Danie Craven, where we would’ve wanted to play this game but unfortunately the league said the pitch is not in the state it would be.
“So it becomes very frustrating to play these amount of games, people will say it is in Cape Town but we have to get to our SAS home base, travel two, three hours again that is taken out of the game,” Barker concluded.
