Cape Town - Stellenbosch FC coach Steve Barker conceded that his players aren't quite on the same level as Kaizer Chiefs after they were thrashed 4-0 on Wednesday.
Siyabonga Ngezana and Dumisani Zuma scored two of Chiefs' goals while Samir Nurkovic bagged a brace to help the league leaders restore their 10-point lead at the top of the standings.
Barker lamented the soft set-piece goals his charges let in early in the game which gave the hosts a mountain to climb against an impressive Chiefs line-up.
"A difficult day for us at the office, when you play a team like Chiefs and you give two goals away in the first half on set-pieces, it puts you on the back-foot," Barker told SuperSport TV.
"[In] the second-half you try to make positive changes, you try to get yourself back in the game and that plays into their hands because on transition they can punish you, we got a bit of a lesson tonight [but] at the same time we got to learn and learn quick.
"We're playing on Saturday again, so we have to take it on the chin, we can see now what it takes to be on top of the league, you can see why they are ten points clear, they had a bit of a poor performance on the weekend but a team like them bounce back in the league.
"They've got ten wins out of 12 games, credit to them they played really well, you could see, we just got to learn, stand up and go forward. You can see the difference, the individual players that Kaizer Chiefs have, they are just really of a higher level, at this stage we're still learning, we hope our players will get to that level.
"It's a learning curve for us, our defenders I think it's the first time they've come up against a striker of [Samir] Nurkovic's quality, big, strong, he knows how to use his body, clever, can head, left-foot, right-foot, can run, can turn, it was a learning curve.
"The important part is that we have to learn quickly, we'll bounce back ourselves, there's still a long way to go, so we'll take this defeat, learn from it and move on and be more positive going forward."
- TeamTalk Media