Bidvest Wits coach Gavin Hunt lamented his team’s defensive performance following their 3-1 loss to Free State Stars in an Absa Premiership encounter on Wednesday night.

The Clever Boys failed to take advantage of second-placed Mamelodi Sundowns’ 2-2 draw with Baroka as they were condemned to a 3-1 loss by a struggling Stars outfit.

Hunt revealed his disappointment in post-match comments and attributed their poor defending and finishing to the loss.

‘Obviously disappointed, I don’t think it was a 3-1 game.’ he said after the loss.

‘I think in the first half we had more than enough chances to get ourselves in the lead and we didn’t take those chances.

‘[We had] great opportunities around their box and then we got caught from two corners and they scored two goals from our corners; we never touched them, they ran right through and scored, so that’s disappointing.

‘We’ve got to defend better, that’s the disappointing part. But all credit to them. To say that they needed it [three points] more than us, well, we also needed it but you’ve got to earn it and we didn’t earn it tonight.

Stars managed to take a 1-0 lead into the half-time break and added another two in the second stanza despite Cuthbert Malajila’s goal giving the visitors a glimmer of hope. The result ended Wits’ six-match streak without conceding a goal in the league, but Hunt stressed that he was let down by his back four.

‘We’re not the most free-scoring side so we rely on our defensive structure and organisation, and our structure went [to nothing] but they can’t be gone from corners.

‘We must have had 15-20 corners tonight and we never got one head on the ball, and we had some great deliveries of the ball. You’ve got to score. There was umpteenth chances there, we didn’t score and they scored at the other end after running right through.

‘We’ve got to keep going, dust ourselves off, there’s nothing we can do about it now – it’s gone

‘It’s our first time off now, six days until the next game and then we’ll see what we have to do.

‘We all know the situation – three points here tonight would have set us well free but it hasn’t happened. We all know if it doesn’t happen it doesn’t happen.

‘But we should have won this thing [title] a long time ago with the points we’ve thrown away. But we’ll keep fighting and go to the end,’ he concluded.

Photo: Muzi Ntombela/BackpagePix