Willow-Ruby van der Berg
In their game against the African Jaguars, Maties faced a devastating defeat. This punctured some of the optimism that had been generated in the recent victories leading up to the game.
Maties seemed to dominate the game in the first half last week Wednesday at the Goldfields Astro, with brilliant through balls and world-class crosses.
Goalkeeper, Dustin van Kerwel, dove and cleared every strike from the opposing team. In the second half, the African Jaguars fought back and scored to secure their 0-1 victory and third place on the log.
With this defeat, Maties remains at fourth place on the log, but Keenan Jacobs, the captain of the Maties soccer team, remains positive about the rest of the season that lies ahead.
“The spirit in the team is good, we are very positive and motivate each other. So we won’t go down with this loss, we will come back stronger [for] the next game. There is still a possibility that we could end up at the top, so we will fight harder and try to win every match from here [on].”
Desmond Crowie, coach of the Maties team, admitted however that he was disappointed with his team’s performance against the African Jaguars because he believes that they could have turned the match around.
He continued by saying that this team currently lacks leadership, which he thinks is one of their greatest downfalls; as this led to them being unable to pull themselves out of the slump after they were 1-0 behind.
Crowie is, however, still optimistic and believes that they can bounce back from this loss, because the Maties soccer team has made a few new signings, which he is confident will give the team more depth and variation in their style of play.
Some of these new faces made their debuts for the u/23 team against the Firefighters in Westridge on Saturday.
Maties came back with a 3-2 victory and it seems as though they are ready to take on all future challenges.
