Chronicle Editor
Ricky Zililo, Senior Sports Reporter
ZIMBABWE national sevens rugby coach Gilbert Nyamutsamba wants the Cheetahs to play lots of rugby after making it to the final Olympics qualifying tournament to be held in France in June.
Zimbabwe, Uganda, China, Hong Kong, Ireland, Jamaica, Mexico, Samoa, Tonga, Brazil, Chile and France will converge for the repechage tournament to be held in Biarritz from June 20-21. The winner of this tournament will secure a ticket to the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
Nyamutsamba, who watched his side finishing eighth behind Japan, Hong Kong, Germany, Chile, Uruguay, Tonga and Uganda at the World Challenger Series in Uruguay at the weekend, said they have to keep their players active to enhance their chances of qualifying for the Olympics.
“Our next international tournament is the Olympic qualifiers in June. Our work is cut out as we try to qualify for the Olympics. We learnt a lot of hard lessons in Chile and Uruguay.
The heavy investment that most second-tier teams have made in their sevens rugby programmes is what we need to emulate going forward.
“Since the game became an Olympic sport, most second-tier countries have invested heavily in sevens and have well-funded and running leagues as well as periodic high performance camps,” said Nyamutsamba.
“In the immediate and short term leading to the Olympic qualifiers in France, we would like to hold high-performance camps with all players and through the ZRU, we ask to set up a sevens league that will run concurrently with the Super Six League. It is incumbent that we try to close the gap between us and other second-tier teams.
Funds permitting, we will also be looking at taking part in several international and regional tournaments to get the much-needed match fitness and experience.” – @ZililoR
Online Reporter