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Innocent Kurira, Sports Reporter
SABLES coach Brandon Dawson says he will use the Currie Cup to give youngsters in his squad a chance to play at the highest level, while also building for the future.
Zimbabwe will prepare for the Rugby Africa Cup by taking part in South Africa’s Currie Cup First Division, which gets underway on the first weekend of April.
Other international sides taking part in the Currie Cup First Division are Georgia and Kenya.
“Our main goal is to qualify for the World Cup. What we are going to use the Currie Cup for is to give youngsters aspiring to play at the World Cup an opportunity to get game time. We will also be looking at building for the future by having them playing in South African rugby, which is a big task to go through. It’s all about building a team for the future,” Dawson told Phaka Rugby Show on SuperSport.
On preparations, he said: “Obviously it’s tough because we have only started playing rugby back in Zimbabwe after the two-year Covid-19 break. The players have been shelved and you can see that they have been out for a long time. They are rusty, but have to step up and put their names forward.
“There are so many players that are foreign-based in our ranks. So it’s difficult to get everybody back together and put them into preparatory work for the Currie Cup.
What is going to happen is we are going to have a two-week camp before our first game. So our preparatory work will start inside those two weeks.”
Team manager Jason Maritz said they are seized with sorting out all the logistics to ensure everything sails smoothly during the duration of the competition.
“We have 55 players that we are talking to. So it’s not going to be easy from the logistics side of things. We are going to be based in Cape Town during the competition, which is home away from home because we have been here when we played the
SuperSport Challenge Cup. It’s a lot more challenging when dealing with the logistics,” said Maritz.
At this year’s Rugby Africa Cup to be staged in France in July, Zimbabwe will face off against Côte d’Ivoire in the quarter-finals.
Should they overcome the West Africans, the Sables will most likely face Namibia in the last four. — @innocentskizoe
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