Cape Town - Cape Town City conceded an 84th minute equaliser as they were held to a 1-1 draw by Golden Arrows on Tuesday evening.
The Citizens blew an opportunity to make their way into the top eight for the first time this season. A victory for Eric Tinkler's men could've lifted them above Abafana Bes'thende, who currently occupy seventh on the DStv Premiership log.
The visitors began the match the brighter of the two sides and were duly rewarded when Gambian international Kajally Drammeh scored his first goal for the club in the 27th minute.
The two sides were pretty evenly matched in the first stanza as both harboured approximately 50% of possession.
However, Tinkler believes his troops were the better of the two teams for large periods of the match and their inability to maintain control at crucial stages cost them three vital points.
"We had 10 minutes of madness in this game. I thought in the first half we were very very good. We knew their threats offensively with (Divine) Lunga and (Pule) Mmodi on their left side and I thought we dealt with that very well," Tinkler explained after the match.
"We created a lot of chances but we keep saying the same things week-in and week-out. We had chances to take the lead, we had a chance to double our lead and we even created chances in the period we weren't playing well but we just failed to convert them."
He then added : "We just had 10 minutes of madness. Obviously they're losing the game and they're going to throw everything at us and take more risks so we had to manage the game better but we didn't and we ended up conceding through a set-piece.
"I'm disappointed in the players because we were just that good in the first half."
The Cape Town club have seemingly turned their fortunes around following a disastrous start to the new season in which they recorded three defeats in a row, leaving them at the bottom of the table after three games.
Since then, Tinkler's men have gone six matches without defeat in the league and eight in all competitions and they’ll want to keep that form going when they tackle their continental challenge at the weekend.
City will welcome Angolan giants Petro de Luanda to the Cape Town Stadium on Saturday at 5:30pm in the first leg of second round qualification in the CAF Champions league.
IOL Sport