Swallows coach Yongama Mkaza gives all the credit to his players for winning the Nashua Knockout Tournament on Friday night.
Mkaza’s team beat the WSU All Blacks 13-6 in a pulsating final at Old Boys Nashua Park in East London.
It was a game of two halves for the Border Super League teams, with both coaches – Mkaza and Sipho Metula – saying their teams had been put to the test.
“Today’s [Friday] win was not easy and you could see that both teams were prepared for this game, but it was a good game,” said Mkaza.
“The stadium was full and everyone was entertained, and no-one said we would take the cup.
“And as I said during the week that we are going to give WSU the respect they deserve, but inside these four lines, we will play according to our structure and make sure that by the end of game we would be the winners,” said Mkaza.
The coach who has also managed to take the Mdantsane-based club to the finals of the Super 12, said he would not have won the knockout final without the support of the club’s management.
“At Swallows we are a family – management, players we are united and I think nothing can beat that, there’s nothing more than being close to one another,” he said. “And you could see that things didn’t go according to the way we planned initially, but because of the belief – because of fitness – because of our togetherness, we triumphed. That’s what’s working for us, we are united and we believe in each other.”
However, Mkaza said this season their defence stood out, but needed to be adjusted a bit as he discovered that the defence had only been effective as a unit close to their tryline.
“We tended to only defend well five metres from out tryline and knew if we can defend from 50 metres away we can ’kill’ teams.
“Which means we can defend well and with two games left in the Super League we have to win both of them.
“And again we cannot become big-headed because we don’t want any slip-ups, as we want to go for the Gold Cup,” said Mkaza.
All Blacks coach Metula said any team which made too many mistakes would always come off second best.
“That’s what has let us down today, there are positives that we take out of this game – which is the character of the boys. They played up until the very last minute and we had chances that we didn’t take, but the boys played very well,” said Metula.
He said losing in two finals this season – Varsity Shield and Nashua Tournament – was not what they wanted but the coach was satisfied with what his charges have managed to achieve.
“This year has been good to us because we went and played finals and I’ll take that as a positive for the boys because they’ve worked very hard in the year. And yes, losing in the finals is not a good feeling but it’s the manner in which you lose, because if you lose by big margins you need to go back to the drawing board,” added Metula.
“The boys are patting themselves on the back after putting up a fight against Swallows.”..