I love it when a plan comes together — Bucs Mthombeni after Casric Stars’ shock penalty win over Orlando Pirates

It could well be that Bucs Mthombeni is a little too young to have watched the popular 1980s television series ‘The A-Team’; for if he had, he would have summed up his post-match conference with Hannibal Smith’s classic line: “I love it when a plan comes together.”

Mthombeni led the lower-division Casric Stars, whom he owns and coaches, to a 5-4 shoot-out defeat of Orlando Pirates in the Nedbank Cup Round of 16 at the Orlando Amstel Arena on Saturday night, and confessed they had played to avoid defeat in open play.

It worked like a charm. The Motsepe Foundation Championship side frustrated the Betway Premiership pace-setters for 90 minutes, plus the extended half-hour, to ensure the match was decided via a shoot-out from the penalty spot.

“First of all, I think the plan worked because we wanted to not concede a goal too early. And then I told the boys, if Pirates cannot score within at least 30 minutes, I think we'll just force them to go to the second half,” the 45-year-old told newshounds at the post-match conference.

“And then for the second half, we said to the boys, let's try to go to extra time. I think Pirates were the better team on the night and they had more opportunities than us.

"I think the goalkeeper [his son, Tshigwana] saved us today. And then because penalties are all about luck, I think that is where we see ourselves.”

As if to rub salt into the Pirates wound, Mthombeni disclosed that Casric’s primary attention is on earning promotion to the elite league.

“Actually, our mind is for us to focus more on the league. But if your plan works, you always receive it with both hands.”

Yet, having knocked out the big guns, and with the other local giants Mamelodi Sundowns out of the competition, Mthombeni has reason to dream of glory, even though he intends taking things “one game at a time”.

“You know, with the Nedbank Cup, you cannot say it's only won by the Betway Premiership teams. I think TS Galaxy won it [in 2019 as a first-division outfit]. But our main objective is to just focus more on the league.

"We don't want to now start focusing on the Nedbank Cup. We'll just take one game at a time and it depends who the next opponent is. But for now, we're going to go back and focus on the league.”

Casric Stars have made the play-offs for promotion season after season, only to fall at that hurdle. Mthombeni wants to change that.

“I think it can be good — after we struggled for four years — just for us to get automatic promotion, because we never have luck when we play in the play-offs.”

Now that he has proven to be a man with a plan against Pirates, surely Mthombeni can come up with an effective one to gain his club automatic promotion? It is a pity he does not seem to be aware of Hannibal Smith, because he would certainly take a leaf out of his book.