adminNoddy Kanyangarara
GENERALLY, 2016 did not live up to expectations. We hosted the World Rugby Under-20 Trophy, which went well from an organizational point of view, but not from a result stand point. The elections then came and that is when the current board was put into power.There were a lot of expectations that came with the board getting into power, top of which was getting results both on and off the field. Our national teams did not perform well.
The Sables lost all their games in the Africa Cup, with both the results and performances against Uganda, Kenya and Namibia a real disappointment.
The Cheetahs failed to qualify for the Rio games, attain core status in the Sevens circuit and even qualify for the Dubai and Cape Town Sevens.
Coming back to the Union, a lot of things happened behind the scenes before we were put into power. I believe we did the best we could to steady the ship.
These things contributed to the poor performances of our national teams. We are not here to point fingers, but wish to clarify that the poor performances that we saw last year were not isolated incidents but rather the accumulation of things that occurred during previous administrations.
To be more specific, the results, which we saw from our teams, can be attributed to the lack of a competitive national league.
Without a competitive national league, the teams and players lack match fitness and competitiveness.
The age-group teams, which under normal circumstances should feed into this league, were also affected.
Now, 2017 promises to be a better year.
We have reviewed the state of affairs within the sport, taken stock of what we need to do and have already begun preparing for the year.
The board has settled in, after a rough six or seven months in power. The restructured, and now expanded, Africa Cup
Group 1A will see us playing more games. The Sables have games against Senegal (away), Namibia (away), Kenya (home), Tunisia (home) and Uganda (away).
The match against Tunisia, slated for July 22, will see Test rugby return to the City of Kings (Bulawayo) after about five years.
We had scheduled a friendly against Poland, for early this year, but have been forced to scrap it after they cancelled on us. In its stead, we are currently working on organizing friendlies against Hong Kong and Papua New Guinea.
We spoke to officials from Papua New Guinea, during last year’s Hong Kong invitational, and they seemed interested in organizing a three-nation tournament with us.
There are obviously the Craven week and World Rugby Under-20 Trophy qualifiers for the younger age-groups to look forward to.
We are also making frantic steps to ensure that the Inter-city league, better known as the National League, also returns this year.
There is the obvious issue of sponsorship to look into, but we are confident that something will come up.
The Gold Cup remains a huge motivation for us to put our house in order, as we hope to ensure our teams become more competitive and as such, we add more representation at the tournament.
After last year’s successful pilot in Chinhoyi, the Varsity Cup will be launched in the coming weeks.
Noddy Kanyangarara is Zimbabwe Rugby Union vice-president, he was speaking to The Sunday Mail’s Tinashe Kusema in Harare on January 4, 2017.
Online Reporter