The Sunday News
Mehluli Sibanda, Senior Sports Reporter
ZIMBABWE national sevens rugby team coach, Gilbert Nyamutsamba is pleased with his team’s display in the two World Rugby Sevens Series Challenge tournaments where the Cheetahs finished eighth.
The Cheetahs just managed to qualify for the Hong Kong Sevens where they will compete for a spot on the HSBC World Rugby Sevens Series 2021.
Zimbabwe finished sixth in Chile and then found the going tougher in Uruguay where they managed 10th spot.
Nyamutsamba feels that his lads did well seeing that the team missed some of the regular players like Connor Pritchard, Shayne Makombe and Tafadzwa Clioquinol.
“Despite the absence of the would-be selected players, Connor, Chitokwindo, Blithe, Godfrey, Shayne due to different reasons — I feel the team performed better than the last outing, that is some progress,’’ Nyamutsamba said.
Playing on consecutive weekends presented a challenge to the Cheetahs with injuries resulting in the team left with just nine fit players instead of 12 by the end of the second tournament.
“Back-to-back (tournaments) are always challenging in terms of injuries — the condition of players, such that the bigger teams that can afford travel to such tournaments with two or three extra players and on second tournament use fresh players. Unfortunately, we got to the second part of the tournament one man down and as the tournament went by we picked up injuries, the last few games were played with only nine players,’’ he said.
The Hong Kong Sevens was meant to take place next month but has been rescheduled for October in response to continued health concerns relating to the Coronavirus outbreak.
On the postponement, Nyamutsamba said while this in an ideal world would have given his team enough time to prepare, his preference was to have the tournament taking place earlier so that his players could carry on the momentum from Chile and Uruguay.
“Ideally it would give us more time to prepare, but judging from the past — I would have preferred the Hong Kong tournament to be sooner rather than later. Later it only means that our team loses out on the momentum that we had gained from the two tournaments. Now we need to find more tournaments in between, and that is a challenge,’’ he said.
Zimbabwe also have a chance of qualifying for the Tokyo Olympics when they take part in the repêchage tournament to be held in June where two runners-up from each of the six continental qualifiers will play, with the winner advancing to the Olympics.
