The Sunday News
Mehluli Sibanda, Senior Sports Reporter
ZIMBABWE national sevens rugby team coach Gilbert Nyamutsamba has laid out his blueprint with his biggest target being to qualify for next year’s World Cup in the United States of America as well as the 2020 Olympic Games in Japan.
Nyamutsamba recently had his plan of action approved by the Nyararai Sibanda-led Zimbabwe Rugby Union board. With the Cheetahs not taking part in international competitions after their dismal show at last year’s Africa Cup in Kenya, Nyamutsamba has requested for at least three tournaments as a build-up to the World Cup qualifier in November.
“Our blueprint is up to 2020 but for now our main focus is based on qualifying for the World Cup in 2018 to be held in San Francisco, USA, the qualifiers for that will be in November at a date to be advised, on that I have asked for a minimum of three competitive tournaments. We are looking at Namibia sevens, London sevens and any other of the South African regional tournaments. There is also talk of the Victoria Falls sevens, ZRU is talking about doing that,’’ said Nyamutsamba.
He is aiming to put in place strong development structures to ensure that the country produces players who can excel internationally. Nyamutsamba will from this week start travelling to places such as Mutare, Masvingo, Gweru and Harare to set up structures where players can train.
“In our blueprint, one thing I really want to establish is the development of sevens, the strategy actually goes into taking sevens to almost all corners of the country to other provinces so in the next few weeks I will be travelling to Mutare, Masvingo, Gweru and Harare to try and establish training groups of sevens. In those trips I will be engaging with coaches to coach them the way we want to play Zim sevens and also help player identification so that we have got training groups in almost all areas that is one of the main things that we are hoping to do. Actually it will help us in developing a wider player base for sevens,’’ Nyamutsamba said.
Zimbabwe’s failure in Kenya has seen Uganda compete at the Dubai and Cape Town legs of the Sevens World Series.
Crucially, the Ugandans are also heading to Hong Kong to have a shot at being core members of the Sevens World Series circuit.
Nyamutsamba was engaged on a four-year contract which expires at the end of 2020. His emphasis seems to be on the expansion of the shortest version of the game in the country. He is well aware that his employers expect him to get the team to play at the same level where the Cheetahs were competing over the years, something he concedes will take a while to happen.
“For me one of my main goals personally is to actually get the development programme going and try to make it a continuous thing, what I have learnt from the past is that as long as we are not developing our local players, we will always fall short when it matters the most. The more of such players that we develop the better for our national team going forward. What they (ZRU) are looking for is to get us competing again at the levels that we were competing in the past two years, they obviously expect us to get onto the World Rugby circuit but that can happen in our third or fourth year,’’ Nyamutsamba said.
Nyamutsamba was handed the task of coaching the country’s national sevens rugby team in October last year, taking over from Daniel Hondo, the man who succeeded him at the beginning of 2015.
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