Online Reporter
Tadious Manyepo
Zimpapers Sports Hub
Herentals Queens……………………………(1)4
Olympic de Moroni………………….………..(1)2
IT’S a painful way to bow out of any competition but Herentals Queens only have themselves to blame for their exit.
At the very first whistle, it looked like a mission well beyond their bite but in the end, it all came down to their lack of cutting edge to get what they ought to have got.
The Zimbabwe champions won this one but the win wasn’t good enough to drag them to the CAF Women’s Champions COSAFA qualifier semi-finals.
But, yesterday wasn’t the day “Vagoni Vebasa” messed it all up.
Their opening Group C 2-0 loss to Costa do Sol of Mozambique was their ultimate undoing.
And they had a lot of burden going into yesterday’s match as they needed to win by a four-goal margin to find their way through to the last four as the best-placed runners-up.
But the burden should have come with loads of pressure as the Student Queens tried hard and ended up being wasteful in front of goal.
Although substitute Morelife Nyagumbo came out guns blazing, hitting a hattrick and Polite Mabika adding another one, the wasted chances were just too many.
Maudy Mafuruse was the chief culprit as she missed a glut of easy takes.
In the end, the Zimbabwe representatives had to bow out, pretty much against their performances, which everyone felt warranted a place in the semis.
But such is football and fate maybe.
“This is deflating,” said Herentals Queens coach Irene Mwanza.
“We knew what we needed to do and we sat out to do exactly that but failed to utilise our chances.
“We were supposed to kill the match well before they even got to know about the match itself.
“It’s very unfortunate we ended up being knocked out after such a massive game and a win.”
Once Nyagumbo grabbed the opener towards the end of the first half, Herentals Queens seemed to relax and allowed Olympic de Moroni back into it.
They even slackened up further as they fell 2-1 down at the resumption before crawling back rather late to pin down this victory which proved to be just academic at the end of the day.
