No more trips to Venda: Shaun Bartlett excited after promoting Spurs to PSL

Cape Town Spurs coach Shaun Bartlett aims to keep the core of players that helped to get the club promoted back to the DStv Premiership.

After their failure to gain automatic promotion to the lucrative top tier, Bartlett led Spurs on a successful campaign in the Premier Soccer League (PSL) promotional/relegation playoffs.

The Capetonians beat Maritzburg United and Casric Stars in the race for a spot in the top tier.

They finished the mini-league with 10 points, three points ahead of Maritzburg, while Stars lost all four of their matches.

It’s a norm for clubs to make a lot of changes in the technical team and playing personnel after getting promoted from the Motsepe Championship Foundation.

But it looks like that won’t be the case with the Urban Warriors because Bartlett feels the team has players that are good enough to compete in the PSL.

While they will obviously bolster the team, Bartlett feels it’s important for the club to reward players who worked hard for it to be in the top tier.     

“It’s massive because my players know, I coach the man first before the player otherwise I won’t get anything out of them as footballers,” Bartlett said.

“Mentally and physically, we apply ourselves everywhere possible. We take care of these boys as much as we can. We were operating at DStv (Premiership) level, that's without a doubt and now we have got the reward.

“The club has got the reward, the players have got the reward as far as competing goes,” he said.

In celebrating this big achievement, the former Bafana Bafana marksman made a statement that has rubbed some people up the wrong way.

Bartlett said he was relieved he will no longer have a trip to Venda in Limpopo and that they will now play in good stadiums.

“And I’ve got no more trips to Venda. Hopefully (there will be) no DStv Premiership in Venda, we can play in good stadiums, I think for me that is a reward for these players.

“I said to them, I want to go to New Peter Mokaba Stadium, I don’t want to go to the Old Peter Mokaba (Stadium) and it’s small things like that.”

Bartlett dedicated the promotion of the club to the club’s legendary former kit manager Albert Hendricks, who passed away in January.

“I can’t forget this. When he passed on, I made a promise to the family that we will get this team promoted,” Bartlett said.

“Albert Hendricks was a big part of this club. He was a kit man when I played and for me it was emotional coming back. He was always giving me advice and when he passed, we said let’s do this for him.” 

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