Sekhukhune United coach Brandon Truter made no excuses for his side's display in the 5-0 defeat to Orlando Pirates.
Babina Noko, who debuted in the competition, were a goal down at halftime and got a chance to level through a penalty-kick thereafter but missed and thus capitulated completely.
The defeat must serve as a lesson going forward then hide from the fact, and the performance from the experience man weren't pleased at all.
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"Where do you start? I actually think we were awful, the first half we were awful. Get to halftime – get the penalty we score 1-1 the game changes. We missed it – the heads went down. But there were defensive mistakes. First goal defensive mistake should've cleared, second goal turnover. Third goal defensive mistake, fourth goal defensive mistake," Truter told SuperSport TV.
"So, it's a lot to look at but its lessons learned from this defeat. You can't hide. The worse you can do now is hide from this defeat but the lessons learned tonight as well is going to be key for us.
"How we react from this is vital. I had some experienced boys tonight but what I saw tonight on the pitch wasn't nice. To be honest, we can't be dropping our heads after a goal and then concede and miss a penalty and then concede four," Truter said.
"We got three days to prepare to our next game. So, it's going to take a tremendous amount of man-management and motivation and hopefully a couple of changes into our next game because 5-0 as good as Pirates are I think we could've competed here tonight.
"Congratulations to them they are in the next round. They scored five at home, they scored four in their last game as well so they're a very dangerous team.
"They're turnovers you saw it tonight as well, we had to react at 2-0, 3-0 down we had to react in terms of nothing to lose, we had to push numbers forward and then we left the back-door open for a few counters and that's the game.
"In moments of issues like that, you have to be brave and try to manage it but silly mistakes, silly mistakes."
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