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Belief key to success: Barker

Pretoria - Following a confidence boosting win on Sunday, University of Pretoria coach Steve Barker believes a greater sense of belief, coupled with a healthy helping of good fortune has seen the Pretoria outfit claim consecutive home victories in the space of a week.

Barker was speaking after AmaTuks eased past visiting Golden Arrows 2-0 in a Premiership clash at the Tuks Stadium, courtesy of goals in either half from Geofrey Massa and Atusaye Nyondo.

"Often in this game nothing really changes, it's just a bit of luck," Barker said of Tuks' form this season.

"We need to be a little bit braver at home and I think this season we are… last season was our first season so we were a little bit more cautious."

Two wins from three home encounters thus far has seen the University side seemingly improve on last season's performance, where they could only manage three wins from 15 home fixtures.

Sunday's win comes on the back of a 2-0 success over Bloemfontein Celtic last Saturday, rounding-off a successful week in Pretoria, despite a disappointing 1-0 defeat away from home in midweek.

"Overall, a good week for us. We've had two home wins on the trot and back-to-back," Barker added.

"I'm not too sure when last that's happened at this club, but it's good. Hopefully we can continue our good form at home.

"As I keep saying, we've been a bit unlucky with all the other games where we've been in it, but been unlucky."

Massa scored his third league goal of the season early in the first half, before Nyondo added the finishing touches on a comfortable victory, leaving a relieved Barker looking forward to a month's break from Premiership action as the attention turns to the Telkom Knockout cup competition.

"Often there are breaks in the league and some people don't always see it as a positive… I do," he said.

"It gives us an opportunity to get the new players further integrated into the squad and also gives us the opportunity to work on our best combinations.

"It gives an opportunity to prepare well. We'll play nine games in eight weeks from the next league game till the end of December."

Meanwhile, Arrows boss Manqoba Mngqithi cited a lack of quality in front of goal as the reason why the coastal outfit has dropped to 13th on the table after six games, which has seen a lone victory for Abafana Bes'thende.

"I wouldn't really say it was a strong defensive effort (from Tuks) because we did get into positions where we could have scored, but unfortunately we fluffed opportunities," Mngqithi said.

"Maybe our timing of the pass, the shot and all that, was not up to scratch, but there were a few instances where we really penetrated nicely but we couldn't really take advantage of those situations.

"We haven't done well in the first six games and it is really not good for us."

In Sunday's only other league result, new-comers Polokwane City caused a major upset when they claimed a 2-0 victory over Ajax Cape Town at the Peter Mokaba Stadium for their first win in the Premiership.

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