By Joshua Hendricks Images: 021 Footballers / April 19, 2022 21:05
The Bayhill Premier Cup came to a thundering conclusion, with Cape Town Spurs dominating the final match against Stellenbosch, taking home a slew of trophies – and reaffirming their reputation as a top football academy.
The Bayhill Premier Cup saw some incredible performances, but the biggest winners of the tournament had to be Cape Town Spurs, who not only downed Stellenbosch 2-0 in the final match, but also reaffirmed their reputation as a top football academy.
Spurs Coach Duncan Crowie got into the tactics that helped his team attain such success against a star-studded Stellies team.
“What we did was we actually nullified the space behind our defence,” he said. “So any ball that was played over, the goalkeeper got it. You didn’t see those three runners. Throughout the tournament, those three runners were on everyone’s lips.”
This is to say that as a team they had to take up a slightly deeper position in order to decrease the space between the defence and the goalkeeper – meaning any ball played behind automatically needs to be of a perfect weight.
The common trend of this Spurs team was that they seemed to score at the end of the first half or at the end of the second half. That wasn’t necessarily a tactic so much as a factor of Big Match Temperament.
“You see this is a young team, and when we play in front of a crowd like this it’s going to get to them,” said Crowie, who ought to know – he is the Head of Youth Football, after all.
“As the game grew, they grew – so that’s most probably why.”
Young or not, they had an incredible tournament: in the end Cape Town Spurs walked away with the Roger Clayton trophy, and were named as the Team of the Series. Meanwhile, Player of the Series was won by their Holding Midfielder, Shuaib Martin, who wore jersey number 18, and Coach of the Series was won by Duncan Crowie.
With that, Spurs have reaffirmed their position in football as an academy that doesn’t just win competitions, but continues to produce so many great football players from the Ajax Cape Town System (as they were formerly known).
The overwhelming feeling as the Cup concluded was of elation and pride for a well-run tournament, as well as joy at getting to share it with supporters, as we celebrate the return to some semblance of normality in community football in South Africa.
