CAR to revamp Africa Cup

Jeffrey Murimbechi Sports Correspondent
THE Confederation of African Rugby have promised a revamp of the Africa Cup structure which will result in more matches for the Zimbabwe Sables. CAR secretary-general, Mervin Green, who is also the South African Rugby Union general manager in charge of development, says there will be more teams in the Africa Cup A1 tier.
The numbers could be boosted from four to eight.

Currently Zimbabwe plays less than five matches a year in the Africa Cup, which leaves huge gaps in their calendar and preparations for major IRB tournaments like the World Cup qualifiers.

“We are looking at the current ranking of the top teams in Africa and we want to get to a point where we have eight teams playing at the same level in the Africa Cup 1A,” said Green.

“We would like to see a case where some of these nations have competitions outside CAR.
“Looking at other regions such as the Americas and parts of Asia like China and Thailand, we are seeing the game growing.”

Green said the current Africa Cup structure has few opportunities for top teams and this was causing serious setbacks in the development of lower tier teams such as Kenya, Zimbabwe and Namibia.

“CAR adopted four years ago a competition structure that will now end in 2014 to ensure that we have a competitive qualification process for the World Cup,” said Green.

“It will be revised in the next World Cup cycle from 2015 onwards because the current cycle has few playing opportunities are limited for the top teams.