Bartlett Explains Tearful Emotions, Discusses Red Card

Cape Town Spurs head coach Shaun Bartlett has revealed why he teared up after the final whistle against Casric Stars and says he remains in the dark over Ashley Cupido’s red card.

The 22-year-old received a questionable red card with 25 minutes to play and Spurs’ clash with Casric dead logged 0-0 at the time.

Spurs needed a goal to keep their 100% record in the promotion/relegation play-offs alive and it came minutes later when Morne Nel opened the scoring and his account for the season with a cracking effort from range.

After the match, Bartlett was see in tears and hugging many of his players, as emotions took over following their massive step towards promotion.

“There was a lot of emotions going through me after the match and obviously what happened in the game itself,” he said after the match.

“More than what the players gave on the field I couldn’t have asked for. We knew it was going to be a tough game, but obviously when you go a man down like that, which we’ve probably done three or four times, we’ve always managed to win games.

“I think these games show you the perseverance and the resilience of the squad, what we have gone through the whole season.

“We can talk about, obviously what happened on the final day, but in the end of the day, we had to pick ourselves up and regroup and come back and start playing the play-offs.

“In all three games, everybody kept talking about goal difference, goal difference, but if you win games, sometimes that’s not going to matter. That’s what we’ll keep doing, we’ve won three games 1-0, clean sheet and that’s the foundation that we keep on building on to get a result.”

The controversial moment of the game came after 65 minutes, when Cupido was caught in a tussle with Ngoanamello Rammala, with the latter appearing to make a headbutt movement, which sparked an angry reaction from Cupido – who was then sent off with a straight red in what looked like a simple finger point.

When asked on the incident Bartlett said even fourth official and linesman tried to communicate with referee Michael Mosemeng but they never got any explanation regarding the sending off.

“Your guess is as good as mine, to be honest, because from where I was standing the fourth official, the referee both where trying to call him to speak to him,” he added.

– Advertisement –

“While they were communicating, also they asking what are you doing, why is he getting a red card.

“He did not communicate to the fourth official or assist referee, my guess is as good as yours on why Ashley got a red card because that boy tackled him from behind.

“He stood up, no arms, no hands nothing was done as far as the red card justified. I’ve got no idea we will wait for match report.”

Spurs moved to nine points on the mini-league table, which means Casric’s hopes of gaining promotion ended. Meanwhile, Maritzburg have to win their final two games against Casric and Spurs to dethrone from the top of the log.