HAD veteran Sibusiso Zuma not missed half the season with injury, he would have had as brilliant a campaign as his fellow veteran Siyabonga Nomvethe, SuperSport United coach Gavin Hunt asserted at the weekend.

Zuma scored the winning goal for SuperSport when they won Saturday's Tshwane derby against Mamelodi Sundowns at Atteridgeville and set down a marker for the Nedbank Cup final on May 26.

"We were very unlucky this season with Zuma. He never played the first round of this season. But I'm sure he would have scored as many as Nomvethe right now if he had played from the start of the season," said Hunt in a reference to the Moroka Swallows striker's 20 goals.

"Zuma snapped his Achilles tendon, which normally would have finished off the career of a player at the age of 36. But look at the way he is playing now, what a fantastic player," drooled the SuperSport coach.

Hunt wants Zuma to stay on again next season: "I want to keep him. I think he can play a role with the younger players, like Thabo Nkoana, who is coming through. The most important thing about Zuma is that he wants to train every day, he wants to play every day.

"Players like him and Nomvete both come from a fantastic mould. I don't know what they were made of there in KwaZulu-Natal! They are fantastic professionals."

Zuma, who turns 37 in June, and the 34-year-old Nomvete both began their Premier Soccer League careers in the colours of African Wanderers in the 1997-98 season under the coaching of Henry "Black Cat" Cele.

Both played over 60 times for Bafana Bafana and both went on to have careers overseas. Zuma was a star in Denmark while Nomvethe went to Udinese as one of the few South Africans to crack it in Serie A.