Mamelodi Sundowns head coach Pitso Mosimane has apologised for the ‘ugly play’, but says his team is fighting for the league after multiple players picked up yellow cards in the win over Bloemfontein Celtic.

With Downs trying to hold on to their 2-1 advantage, Gaston Sirino, Hlompho Kekana and Sibusiso Vilakazi were all booked for time-wasting at the corner flag straight after each other in a passage of play that was hard to believe.

Then Mosa Lebusa became the fourth player to also be booked for delaying the game while taking a corner in the latter stages.

Mosimane, though, defended his team’s tactics and said that they were only doing what had to be done.

‘Ja, we had to do what we had to do. If you want to keep going with the league, you don’t want to have four players on three yelows, it’s not gonna help you. It’s not that we’re delaying, no we don’t delay the game,’ Mosimane told SuperSport TV.

‘Sundowns never delays the game and Denis [Onyango] was clattered there, OK? So, we had to do what we had to do, everybody does it. We can get the criticism, we know it’s gonna come but everybody does it. Did you see Pentjie Zulu do it over the weekend?

‘Everybody does it, it doesn’t look nice but we had to do what we had to do. Sorry about the ugly play, but we’re fighting for the league, it’s the survival of the fittest,’ he concluded.