Bafana coach Pitso Mosimane backs his forwards to overcome the anxiety attack that hit them in the second half of the 2-0 victory over Niger on Saturday night.

"It's strange, the second goal by Bernard Parker was a brilliant one. It was a very difficult execution," said Mosimane after Bafana's opening Nations Cup qualifier.

"But we can't finish the easy ones. In the training sessions we worked on finishing, finishing, finishing. But we have to be patient - a little bit of maturity and experience is needed."

The team missed a catalogue of inviting cha-nces against a very weak Niger defence - and Mosimane admits to being concerned that the failure to build a heal-thy goal difference could haunt his team later in the race to qualify for the 2012 African Nations Cup.

Egypt and Sierra Leone are Bafana's other group opponents in Group G.

Only the two best of 10 second-placed teams go through to the finals, while the second-placed team in Group K is guaranteed to qualify because the group contains five teams.

Second-placed teams are ranked first by points, then by goal difference, and finally by the number of goals scored.

Mosimane said he was both excited and frustrated by his team's first competitive outing. "I have mixed feelings, sometimes I was very happy and sometimes frustrated. It can be better, and the only worry I have is that come the last match of the group, we may have trouble with goal difference.

"In the next qualifier against Sierra Leone (in Freetown on October 8) we hope to get one or two chances, and hopefully take one chance.

"We played them there in the last campaign, and created a few chances. The conditions over there are very different, and they are big boys as well.

"The confidence is there; let's see what they do away. We can judge them on that. True judgment must be made on the qualifiers, not the friendly games."

Katlego Mphela scored his 18th international goal to open the scoring against Niger, thus drawing level with Phil Masinga's total for Bafana.

But while Masinga took 58 games to notch up his 18, Mphela has taken just 37 games.

Only Benni McCarthy (31 in 79 games) and Shaun Bartlett (28 in 74 games) have higher Bafana goal tallies than Mphela, who is 25.