Maduka: You can't fault the players' effort

Royal AM head coach John Maduka has explained how they were punished by Orlando Pirates during their 4-0 defeat.

Pirates went to the break with only a 1-0 lead thanks to a penalty scored by Patrick Maswanganyi but an early goal from Thalente Mbatha in the second stanza took the game away from Thwihli Thwahla.

Relebohile Mofokeng and Kabelo Dlamini added two late goals to secure a rampant win, but Maduka says mistakes were to blame for the loss.

 Rampant Pirates thrash Royal AM

"I think if you look at the game itself, we started well, we did compete for each and every ball, whenever we were in possession, we could keep the ball and get to that final third," Maduka told SuperSport.

"Maybe after the penalty you concede but still we were on it. We still continued pushing in the first-half. Second half you can't fault the boys for the effort. It's only that we made mistakes and you know a team like this, with the quality that they have, you make mistakes they punish you.

"And they wait for that moment. Every time we go to bed, we sleep, that's where we find ourselves conceding the goals because we're a team that plays to go forward and they make sure that they wait for those opportunities, that you make a mistake they punish you and exactly it happened. It wasn't meant to be, hard luck we look forward to coming game.

"When you're trailing 3-0, 4-0, you've got to take the game to the opposition, when we were 2-0 down, we thought we're still in the game, you can't make drastic changes, you still need to be patient because the boys were still doing well."

Royal AM are lying 13th on the log and Maduka suggested that they are not worried about being dragged to the relegation zone.

"We don't think of the team not being in a