malvernmugadzikwa
Deputy Sports Editor
SHAUN DE SOUZA has roped in Nico De Villiers and Godwin “Jaws” Murambiwa for their expertise, as the Zimbabwe Junior Sables prepare for the task that lies ahead.
The rugby team has a chance to etch their names in the history books when they travel to Kenya for the World Rugby Under-20 Trophy.
Eight teams are expected to converge on Nyayo National Stadium in Nairobi, Kenya, from July 15 to 30 and slug it out for the sole ticket to the World Rugby Under-20 Championships.
The eight sides — Scotland, Uruguay, the United States, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Spain, Samoa and Hong Kong —have been placed into two groups.
Each team will play three games.
The top teams from each group will then meet in the final, with the winner booking their ticket to the World Rugby Under-20 Championships.
While Zimbabwe currently have a lot of momentum after back-to-back Barthes Trophy successes, the last coming in dominant fashion, the Junior World Trophy is a different ball game, and De Souza acknowledges as much.
As the team wrapped up preparations before their departure for Kenya this week, the coach took the opportunity to call in more technical brains in De Villiers and Murambiwa to gauge the progress his forwards and backline have made during training.
“The camp has been going on very well. We have a 34-man squad that has been grinding it out and we brought in a specialist scrum forwards coach, who came in from Western province, Nico De Villiers,” said De Souza.
“I asked him to look at specific technical aspects of the set piece and the scrummaging of the front row.
“We also had Godwin Murambiwa coming in as specialist backline coach to also focus on specific areas of our game.
“The main reason behind asking these two to come in was that I wanted to get an outside view of the squad and get a ranking base for each of the players in the squad.”
The seasoned gaffer has been taking his boys through the ringer for the past couple of weeks.
Yesterday, he had the chance to put them on display when the Junior Sables played their final warm-up game against a Zimbabwe A select team at Prince Edward School.
“It has been good; it has been a very hard and intense couple of weeks for the boys on the training field.
“We have been putting in the work in the gym, and off-field, we had a couple of legacy programmes, where we went to Mbare and visited a couple of schools to have a few meet-and-greets with some of the younger boys.
“The vibe has been good in camp as we have a very solid mixture of some of the boys who were on duty at the Canada Invitational Series last year and the Barthes Trophy winners,” he added.
Zimbabwe begin their World Trophy campaign with a tough date against Scotland on July 15.
It is arguably their biggest assignment of the entire tournament, as Scotland are fresh from being relegated from the World Championships and will be eager to make a quick return to that elite grouping.
“The Scots have been a very interesting team to watch; we have been keeping tabs on them throughout their Six Nations campaign and we also saw them play against Spain a few weeks ago.
“They have improved a lot throughout the last couple of months and we expect them to be a strong opposition.
“It will be physical, it will be a tactical match-up and we just have to pull up our socks in those departments,” De Souza said.
Online Reporter