THE GOALLESS draw that Bafana Bafana played against Tanzania at Polokwane’s Peter Mokaba Stadium Friday night would seem to suggest a dearth of alternate talent available to coach Hugo Broos.
But the Belgian would no doubt have been pleased with some of the players he handed debuts to in a friendly international intended for blooding new players.
Khulumani Ndamani walked away with the man of the match award in his maiden appearance for the country’s senior national team and expressed a desire to continue wearing the gold and green in future.
On a night when the regular Bafana players were absent, the squad missed all the Mamelodi Sundowns players who usually make up the bulk of the starting line-up, the newbies gave as good as they got against a pretty physical Tanzania outfit that was clearly out to impress.
Guided by the likes of Patrick Maswanganyi and Oswin Appolis who have been in the squad for a while now, Bafana controlled proceedings and asked questions of the visitors early on with the latter seeing his attempt that was headed for goal cleared just before it crossed the line on ten minutes.
It could well have been that he was playing in the city where he plays his club football because Appollis was bafana’s livewire and had two other chances, one a shot late in the half which the Tanzanian goalkeeper saved with consummate ease. He then blasted a free kick against the wall shortly after the break.
Another Bafana ‘oldie’ Thalenthe Mbatha disturbed the bats’ flying pattern with a rugby style shot late in the first half as the hosts looked to make their dominance count for a goal.
Besides Ndanmane, Broos also handed new caps to Deano Van Rooyen and Simphiwe Selepe from the onset while goalkeeper Renaldo Leaner came on for Ricardo Goss during the second half.
Relebohile Mofokeng came on late in the game and almost scored when he lobbed the advanced goalkeeper but only succeeded in landing the ball on the roof of the net.
Tanzania played a pretty physical match with some crunching tackles that left Broos jumping up and down the sidelines in anger.
He would have, however, been pleased with the exercise of handing out new caps in a bid to grow his pool of players ahead of the upcoming World Cup qualifiers in September as wella s the Africa Cup of Nations finals set to take place in Morocco at the end of the year.
Bafana are due to play against Mozambique at the same venue on Tuesday.
