Cape Town - Kaizer Chiefs head coach Steve Komphela says the effort his players showed needs to be commended, after playing with ten men for most of their Telkom KnockOut semi-final defeat to Bidvest Wits on Saturday.
Amakhosi saw teenage midfielder Wiseman Meyiwa sent off after 25 minutes for an alleged stamp on winger Daine Klate and conceded the only goal of the game from the resulting free-kick.
James Keene, who was previously on trial at Amakhosi before joining the Clever Boys, made no mistake with an accurate header beyond goalkeeper Itumeleng Khune.
However, the Soweto giants fought valiantly for the remainder of the encounter and had the home side on the back-foot for most of the second-half, despite their numerical disadvantage.
A half-time substitute of defender Daniel Cardoso for striker Gustavo Paez raised a few eyebrows, but the former Mariztburg United boss said the gamble was needed as he looked for his first silverware as a head coach.
"You had to be positive, you're losing, it's a knockout competition. You had to make a choice, you compromise one of the defenders I thought it worked well," he told SuperSport after the game.
"Even when we suffered one man we could have scored here, the chance that Zuma had when he hit the crossbar and the one where he clashed with the goalkeeper. In matches of this calibre, you have to take one of them."
"If you're one man down, in a game of 10 people and there's ten available then it means each one of us has to give an extra 10 percent so we can complete the eleven on the field, so we need to create an extra player by effort.
"We did and it worked, I think the players did well to create that additional player we lost."