Going 2 down does something to a side, and what it usually does is finish them. Not here. SuperSport United rebuilt the afternoon goal by goal, and Golden Arrows had no answer to any of it.
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Thamsanqa Erasmus provided it, and the 8.54 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
The hardest thing about being 21 in a senior side is that nobody makes allowances. Hlompho Mothiba did not need any: 8.10, and he looked the most comfortable man on the pitch.
At 19 he is being sung about by people twice his age, which is an affection a signing has to earn over years and a local kid gets for turning up. It is also the hardest thing in football to live up to.
A squad rebuilt inside one window pays for it in a currency nobody budgets for. The football is not worse than the sum of the players; it is worse than the sum of the players who have played together before.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at SuperSport United this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Free State Stars will want this one forgotten quickly: 3‑0, every duel lost, and a long ride home. SuperSport United were ruthless in the way good sides are ruthless.
Two goals and a mark of 8.80 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
The hardest thing about being 21 in a senior side is that nobody makes allowances. Hlompho Mothiba did not need any: 8.22, and he looked the most comfortable man on the pitch.
5 straight away victories. Sides that win away are usually sides that can defend and can counter, and the table has begun to reflect what those journeys have earned.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at SuperSport United this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Ronwen Furman is 22, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
4 straight away victories. Sides that win away are usually sides that can defend and can counter, and the table has begun to reflect what those journeys have earned.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Oumar Komara is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at SuperSport United this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
“The players deserve the credit. My job was easy today.” It was not, and everybody in the room knew it; after 2‑0, Bongani Mokotjo could afford to be generous.
One weekend, judged against everybody else's. Williams Manyama has come out on top of it, and for most footballers a weekly award is the only silverware a career ever produces.