adminat the Africa Olympic Qualifiers being held at Khumalo Hockey Stadium.
Besides international matches, there are no vibrant provincial and national league activities to count on.
Both the men and women’s teams have performed dismally since the competition started last Friday. It ends on Sunday. The men’s team has so far played against Egypt, South Africa and Kenya. They lost to Egypt 5-0, South Africa 10-0 and Kenya 4-0.
Zimbabwe has not scored a goal in both the men and the women’s categories throwing into perspective the deplorable standards of the local game.
At some stage Zimbabwe were ranked second to South Africa on the continent.
Men’s coach Bill Birkett said they were finding the competition tough and had struggled in the past three matches.
“We are finding it difficult considering that we have not played for such a long time. We also played the top two sides in our opening matches and the players did their best. We struggled in our third match against Kenya but today (yesterday) is our day to rest and we are regrouping,” he said.
Birkett said they had looked into their mistakes and they were going to work on them when they play against Ghana today.
“We are not despondent. We have looked at our mistakes and we want to take them into consideration when we play against Ghana tomorrow (today),” he said.
Birkett concurred that they had not played well against Kenya on Monday and attributed this to the mistakes that the team made and lack of experience.
One player in the men’s team who was capped going into the match is captain Rowland Rixon-Fuller who has five caps and last played in 2003 when Zimbabwe took part in the All-Africa Games in Nigeria.
“Against Kenya we made a few mistakes like giving the ball away too easily. We are looking forward to our match against Ghana. This is a learning curve since we are playing against teams with years of experience. We have roughly two weeks of hockey playing on artificial turf,” he said.
Birkett said even though they were playing at home there was not much of home advantage as a number of odds were stacked against the national teams.
He said from the first match there has not been an improvement in the way the national teams were playing.
“There is no improvement. We played well in the first two matches but when it came to the Kenya match it was the lowest game we played. We did put so much effort in our first two matches but came a bit short on the scoring. We have to learn to hold possession,” he said.
Zimbabwe play against Morocco on Friday and Birkett said they were not going to take them for granted.
The women’s coach Anton Five said they had played well in the first match against Ghana where they held them to a nil-all draw.
“We played well against Ghana and failed to hold on to that when we played Kenya. We were unfortunate. We will be playing South Africa and the players will do their best,” he said.
Five said they were playing against teams that have been playing international matches and have more experience. South Africa took part in a European tour about two weeks before the Africa Olympic Qualifiers.
Hockey Association of Zimbabwe president, Kays Kanyangarara said they were happy with the level of play so far.
“It has been good because we have managed to adapt to the level of competition.
“Some people would look at the scoreline in respect of the competition but the teams have played well despite that. Hockey is a high scoring game and it had been adapted as such,” he said.
Online Reporter