Richards Bay hand Truter his first win in Betway Premiership

Richards Bay got their Betway Premiership off to a perfect start with a 1-0 hard-fought victory over TS Galaxy in their opening match at King Zwelithini Stadium.

Keegan Allan scored the only goal of the match in the 22nd in his debut and that proved to be enough to hand the Natal Rich Boyz all three points and to start their campaign with a victory.

Allan, who joined the side from now-defunct Moroka Swallows, produced a man-of-the-match performance as he was also solid at the back to help his side and give new coach Brandon Truter a winning start.

It was not an impressive performance from the hosts, but they will be pleased with the results in their first match at home.

Having lost a few key players during the transfer window, it was evident that Galaxy would struggle this campaign as they don’t have the same quality.

Although they had a promising start against the Natal Rich Boyz, they struggled to create any decent chances and were not aggressive enough in the final third as they used to be.

The hosts were compact in their defence and made things a bit difficult for Galaxy to penetrate them during the match.

It was not long before the deadlock was broken as Bay opened the scoring through Allan, who headed from an inswing delivery in the 22 minutes on his debut for the club to make it 1-0. 

The Rockets offered little going forward and went into the interval trailing. With a goal advantage, Truter’s side opted to sit back in the second half and hope to catch Galaxy on a break.

They had chances from the break but decision-making in the final third denied them.

Bay invited pressure and Galaxy threw everything at them in search of the equaliser and defended well for their win. Galaxy had all the possessions but failed to break the Bay wall and ran out of ideas towards the end of the match and were left frustrated.

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