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Innocent Kurira, Sports Reporter
THE Mighty Warriors will begin their 2020 COSAFA Women Championships campaign with a tie against Tanzania at Wolfson Stadium tomorrow.
Zimbabwe will be hoping to get off to a winning start despite limited preparation time owing to the Covid-19 crisis.
Mighty Warriors coach, Sithetheliwe “Kwinji 15” Sibanda, has made it clear that she will focus on the positives rather than the little time they have to adequately prepare.
After the Tanzania tie Zimbabwe will face Botswana five days later.
Zimbabwe have won the regional tournament once, when they beat South Africa 1-0 at the 2011 finals in Harare.
The Mighty Warriors finished third at last year’s tournament and will be hoping to improve on that performance but their opening game will not be an easy one.
Their opponents, Tanzania, first appeared in the COSAFA Women’s Championship in 2011 and made a strong impression, walking away with the bronze medal.
They managed pool stage wins over Botswana (3-1) and Zambia (2-0), but lost to South Africa (1-0) to finish runners-up. That set up a semifinal with hosts Zimbabwe, where they lost on penalties after a 0-0 draw.
They made up for that disappointment with a 3-0 success over Malawi in the third-place play-off. They will appear again this year and hope to emulate the Tanzania side that claimed the COSAFA Women’s Under-20 Championships at the same Nelson Mandela Bay venue last year.
Tanzania qualified for their only African Women’s Championship finals in 2010, when the finals were hosted in South Africa. They lost all three pool stage games though, going down to the hosts (2-1), Mali (3-2) and Nigeria (3-0).
Online Reporter