Philippi’s Dangerous Heroes rounded off what coach Bayanda Sikiti described as a “fair” season when they beat UCT 4-2 in the women’s Coke Cup final, at Athlone Stadium, on Saturday. Western Cape Sasol League winners and fresh from a successful play-off campaign which saw them gain promotion to the national Hollywoodbets Super League, UCT could be considered favourites going into Saturday’s finals.
But, as the saying goes, this is football and anything can happen on any given day. This particular day belonged to Heroes, who lifted their second consecutive Coke Cup trophy.
UCT drew first blood when Janica Andrews found her mark from the penalty spot. Lilipho Makeleni scored the equalizer half way through first half following a defensive error from UCT. Lelona “Lelo” Nyongama, Onalo “Messi” Masumpa and Sisipho “Mbesuma” Mlomo each contributed a goal. Tara Haoust pulled one back for the students.
“We planned, we trained and we prepared ourselves to go up against the good and strong UCT team,” said Sikiti, who fielded a group of young players who came from the club’s development league team.
“In football, he said, it’s never easy, and we don’t encourage complacency.”
En route to the final, opportunity to advance favoured Heroes as YB Macassar withdrew from the competition during one of the knockout rounds,
“We then advanced to the next rounds where we played Badgers, CT Roses, UWC, Salt River and UCT in the final, all tough matches, so it’s never easy,” he said.
Although delighted with the result, Sikiti is not one to bask in the glow of success for too long.
“The competition has grown so much, it has now attracted so many people from all communities because Safa Cape Town reaches out to every single corner in Cape Town to make sure that Coke Cup is played and supported.They also brought in partners to bring more success to this competition. So it is growing every year,” he said.
UCT women’s head coach Ahmed Parker, who has been with the university outfit since 2016, said although they would have loved to have added the cup to their trophy collection, it’s not all doom and gloom as far as he’s concerned.
“I think we’ve done well this season as a whole. Our objective was to gain promotion to the Hollywoodbets national league. We’ve managed to achieve that,” he said.
Parker missed out on Saturday’s final due to an injury sustained in a motor vehicle accident on their way to the play-offs in Knysna.
“From a Coke Cup perspective, we also wanted to win but were beaten by a better team on the day. Congratulations to Dangerous Heroes,” he said.
“This unfortunately is our last participation in the Coke Cup, because we are now going to be at the next level so we won’t be able to participate in this competition. We will have our LFA teams and the UCT lower teams participate,”he said.
“Over time we can probably develop another team that’s capable of competing but for now the focus was promotion to Hollywoodbets and that’s what we’ve achieved.
Former pro footballer Kamaal Sait, head of coaching at The Footballers Lab, the company contracted to oversee the coaching at UCT has been assisting the side for nearly a decade.
“We’ve had an excellent season, he said, ”Thanks to the coaching staff and players. Like the coach said, our main objective has been achieved, which was to qualify for promotion. Everything else was just a bonus. A big positive is that we have another team in Cape Town to create awareness of our women players with regards to the national team and just the landscape of women football in Cape Town.
