It was a season of few highs and many lows for former two-time champions UP-Tuks as they failed to qualify for the 2016 Varsity Football semi-finals.
The University of Pretoria students struggled to win matches throughout the tournament but will walk away from this season with a Varsity Football record 9-1 win against the University of Fort Hare.
UP-Tuks had one foot in the door in terms of qualifying for the 2016 Varsity Football semi-finals but needed the University of Witwatersrand to beat NWU-Mafikeng in the final round of the regular season which Wits failed to do.
Head coach Tlisane Motaung paid tribute to the teams that qualified for the knockouts and believes that a young squad and their defensive woes were major factors that contributed to their absenteeism from the knockouts.
“I’d like to congratulate all the teams that qualified for the knockouts. Personally I hope our neighbours, TUT, can go all the way and bring the trophy back to Pretoria,” Motaung told varsitysportssa.com.
“In terms of our own performances, we had a bad season. As coach I’m disappointed but we have no choice but to reflect on our season and improve.
“A huge setback was that we lost so much experience last year but we knew that this would be a problem. What stands us in good stead for next season is that the new players are more experienced now.
“I think another problem we suffered from was our defence. We conceded in five of our seven matches. This is just not good enough but it can be fixed and that is what we will be working hard on for next season,” said Motaung.
Captain Simbongile Njokwe echoed his coach’s sentiments but added that inconsistency was the root of all evil for the University of Pretoria students.
“Our inability to be consistent was a huge problem. We would either win by a mile or lose matches that we should have won. We will need to fix this ahead of next season,” said Njokwe.
The UP-Tuks Varsity Football squad will now turn their attention to the Castle SAB League under the guise of Spartak FC and the USSA tournament as they prepare for next season’s Varsity Football competition.
By Dan Lombard
