The Amakhosi might have made their own life a bit more difficult when they needed a penalty shoot out to help see them past their old Soweto adversaries Moroka Swallows in a Telkom Cup game last sixteen game on Saturday evening, despite twice giving up the lead the Chiefs captain on the night Shaun Bartlett has commended the team for the their spirit and determination. Which eventually saw Chiefs join Mamelodi Sundowns in the last eight of the Telkom Knock Out Cup, Bartlett who scored Chiefs first goal on the night in injury time at the end of the first half. Believes that given the manner in which The Amakhosi triumphed over Swallows it will give the team a major boost in their quest for multiple honours this season.

Turning point

For the opening forty five minutes of the clash against the Birds Chiefs were in total control of the game, and while Swallows did manage to pick up their game late in the second half and for short spells in extra time it was Chiefs who played the more attractive game and were largely responsible for dictating the pace of play. Bartlett believes that the manner in which Chiefs were victorious over Swallows will be a turning point in the 2007 – 2008 season for The Amakhosi. As he added “if you see the hunger and determination that the team played with against Swallows you will know that this is a team willing and wanting to succeed, believe me this game will act as a catalyst of change for us and things can only get better from this point onwards in the season”.

No need for shoot out

With the amount of chances that Chiefs created they should have wrapped up the game in normal time and should not have had to go into extra time, this was something which Bartlett agreed on saying. “We most definitely created the chances to have gone two or three goals up in the first half, I had an effort saved by the Swallows keeper and Arthur could have wrapped it up in the 88th minute when he had a one on one with the keeper. Football is such that if you let the opportunity go by it could land you in problems but credit to the guys for keeping at it and we came through”. Most importantly though for Bartlett is that Chiefs still have a life in the Telkom Cup when he commented “the important thing for us now is that we into the quarter finals and we can look forward to that now”.