Newly appointed SuperSport United head coach Gavin Hunt says it is the right time for his career to return to the club.
Hunt won three consecutive league titles at SuperSport between 2007 and 2013 before moving on to Bidvest Wits where he won another league title in the 2016/17 campaign prior to their status sale.
The 57-year-old who’s coaching career in the professional ranks, which dates back to 1995 then had ill-fated stints with Kaizer Chiefs and Chippa United, where he was sacked in his first season and both clubs.
However, Hunt feels the timing probably wasn’t right for either of those roles he revels in the return to Matsatsansa ahead of the 2022/23 DStv Premiership season.
“The sale of Bidvest affected us all, everyone lost their jobs, the players most of them got clubs so we couldn’t have done a bad job there,” Hunt told reporters at SuperSport Studios this week.
“An opportunity obviously came there [at Kaizer Chiefs and Chippa], timing is not always [right]. I thought when this came up the timing is right. It’s a good opportunity to go in, to build another team and build on what they had here before.
“[I start] at the back, I think they have a nucleus of a team, it’s not like we starting from scratch, what we need to do is obviously the younger players, because of the market, we need to look at those that came from the system last season, look at them, give them a good honest assessment and then see where, how and what we can do [in the market].”
On the notion that he left SuperSport due to their lack of ambition to compete, Hunt admitted that the landscape of the Premier Soccer League (PSL) has changed and he needs to evolve to bring success back to the Tshwane-based outfit which does not revolve around luring established names as he did in his first stint.
“The PSL has changed completely, I don’t know if it’s Covid or whatever but the pool of players has gotten smaller, the players who are available because possibly one or two clubs have taken a lot of the players,” he continued.
“It’s a different model now from when I first came here, I walked into this team with established players, good young players too like Ronwen [Williams] in the U18s and these types of things.
“Now it’s turned on its head a little bit and I think most clubs are looking at their youth and bringing in a lot of players, where this club has a good academy which is obviously a big attraction for me, it’s not willy nilly – it’s an academy with a proper structure and alignment to the first-team which is something I got involved with six or seven years ago from Pitso’s time you know…
“I think it’s exciting for me, I gave a lot of young players a chance right back to Seven Stars [days] back in 1995…”
