Cape Town - Maritzburg United coach Eric Tinkler has commented on his side's disrupted preparations for Wednesday's promotion-relegation play-off clash with Tshakhuma Tsha Madzivhandila.
The Team of Choice arrived at Thohoyandou Stadium only to be greeted by a "horrible smell" and an "itchy" substance in their dressing room.
As such, Tinkler opted to take his team out of the visitors' dressing room in favour of changing on the team bus.
"You got to understand that you are trying to make the players not focus on those things because we are here for a specific job and that is obviously to try to get the three points, you know," Tinkler was quoted as saying by Times Live.
"But it's obviously sad when you've got situations like that, but you got to deal with it and I think we dealt with it in the right way."
When asked about the state of the visitors' dressing room, he continued: "It was worse than that - yeah, it (the dressing room) had a horrible smell and worse than that, there was some product that they put in there that made everyone itchy, you know.
"Everyone was itching (Tinkler laughs)... including myself.
"There seems to have been something in there that was put (and) whether it was on purpose or not, I can't say that.
"But obviously it was difficult for us to stay in the change room because all the players were complaining about it.
"So hence the fact that we made the choice to rather go and change in the bus. Those things have happened in the past and it's unfortunate that it's happening in these days.
"I remember as a player in the 80s, you used to go change in the bus, hey (because of muti use in the dressing room)."