Cheetahs need more game time

Petros Kausiyo Deputy Sports Editor
AFTER finally bouncing back into competitive at the Kwese Victoria Falls Sevens tournament, Zimbabwe’s Cheetahs are convinced they can only get better with more game time.

The Cheetahs surrendered their Victoria Falls title following a narrow 10-5 defeat by Kenya in the final on Sunday but both coach Gilbert Nyamutsamba and team manager Donald Mangenje are convinced their side is still on track.

Following some withdrawals by some teams that had been pencilled to come, Zimbabwe fielded three sides at the tourney — Cheetahs, Goshawks and the Zambezi Steelers. But there is no doubting that the main focus was always going to be on the World Cup bound Cheetahs who were returning to competitive action, five months after they sealed their place at the global Sevens showcase set for San Francisco, United States in July.

Before they head off to the United States, the Cheetahs also face a tough hurdle in their bid for a place at the World Series when they travel to Hong Kong on April 1 for the qualification tournament.

“Vic Falls was good for us. Lots of talent on display, especially for the Cheetahs, I am impressed that the two guys (Connor Pritchard and Ziyanda Khupe), they have potential. “We had four days of camp before the tournament and I think the players did exceptionally well and outplayed themselves. In the four days before Vic Falls, we concentrated more on defence and combinations and that we conceded just four tries during the tournament shows that we are in the right direction.

“For the next four days of camp we are going to focus more on attack so that when we go to Hong Kong, we would have at least done some defence and some attack,’’ Nyamutsamba said.

The Cheetahs coach said having a large pool of players to choose from in a tournament set-up had helped ease his job.

“Having a large pool of players in one place is always an added advantage and it’s what every coach really wants and it gave us an opportunity to look at some players so for me this weekend was a good one.

“The way we had structured all the three teams was such that there was a mixture of youth and experience and you will find that in the Steelers team we had some Cheetahs players in Kelvin Magunje and Takudzwa Kumadiro and in the Goshawks we had Gardner Nechironga and Lucky Sithole.’’ Mangenje reckoned that their overall performance in the holiday resort town had underlined the fact that the Cheetahs needed more tournaments in the build-up to the World Cup finals.

Zimbabwe Rugby Union vice-president Martin Shone also lauded the Cheetahs for their performance at the Victoria Falls tournament and pledged to discuss with his boss Aaron Jani on the plea by the technical team for more tournaments and at least a high profile training camp in South Africa possibly with world sevens giants — the Blitzboks. The Cheetahs are expected to regroup tomorrow but this time Nyamutsamba will have 18 players in camp with the side being trimmed to 12 shortly before their departure for Hong Kong.