Bakgaga were condemned to a 3-1 defeat away to Maritzburg United at the Harry Gwala Stadium on Friday evening, as a valiant effort at a comeback in the second half backfired late on.
Dlamini felt his side failed to settle into the game in the first half, and says the Easter Weekend may have affected his players' from "coming to the party".
"We regret a horrible first-half, we failed to adapt to the conditions. We started the game at 2-0 [down] so it was always going to be difficult to come back," Dlamini told SuperSport TV.
"When your best players don't come to the party, maybe because of the conditions or because of the eve of the holidays, then you know it's always going to be difficult."
After making two early changes, the Limpopo-based outfit changed their approach to try and fight their way back into the tie, and it almost paid off but for great defending by the home side before a late goal diminished their hopes of salvaging anything from the tie.
Dlamini, though, believes that 30 points are still attainable as they seek to survive the drop, with just six games remaining in their maiden top flight campaign.
"We thought in the first half we were playing route-one football, then [in the second half] we thought let's keep the ball more and introduced ball players," Dlamini added.
"It was there but now you know when you go on the attack you're always going to be caught on the break, but we played a very good second half, but the first half will always have the effect of starting very, very slow.
"We're on 21 points, we need three wins to take us to 30, then after that anything is possible. We have six games left, it's not gone it's still going to happen but we'll take this loss and work on our mistakes going forward."
