No more excuses

Zimpapers Sports Hub

SHAUN DE SOUZA has removed every excuse.

After two successive Barthes Trophy disappointments on home soil, the Zimbabwe Junior Sables coach believes every obstacle that stood between his team and success has been addressed.

The preparations have been longer, the opposition stronger and the squad exposed to a higher standard of rugby than ever before.

Now he expects only one outcome.

“We felt that after two upsets at home, losing the Barthes Trophy in 2024 and 2025, we needed to go back to the drawing board, reconfigure our settings and try to get back to winning ways,” said De Souza.

“This time around, we don’t have an excuse. We are going to Uganda to win and reclaim our trophy.” Zimbabwe’s preparations began in December with a pre-season tour of Abu Dhabi, where the Junior Sables faced some of the world’s leading school rugby sides.

They have since travelled to Pretoria for matches against the Limpopo Blue Bulls Under-21 and the Blue Bulls Presidents XV Under-20, giving the coaching staff valuable opportunities to assess the squad under pressure.

“Our training programme has been running since December, when we had an Abu Dhabi Under-19 pre-season tour and we played against the top schools in the world that were at that event,” said De Souza.

“So that is where the journey started. We were fortunate. We have just come back from another tour to Pretoria where we played the Limpopo Blue Bulls Under-21 and then the Blue Bulls Presidents XV Under-20, which was a follow-up from the Abu Dhabi pre-season tour.

“We let things happen in Abu Dhabi and we saw what we needed to see. Now we are trying to correct and fine-tune our processes.”

Extra preparation time also allowed De Souza to address something previous campaigns had largely overlooked – the mental side of the game. Among the biggest changes has been the decision to bring in Sherpherd Wazara to work with the players on the psychological side, an area the coach believes is just as important as physical preparation.

“That’s a huge, huge shift for us, bringing in Sherpherd to talk to the boys,” said De Souza.

“Players are just used to coming to the field, getting on with their business and not really taking note of the mental side.

“However, Sherpherd has done a phenomenal job with the boys, just to get them to understand why they are doing what they are doing.

“Some of us just play rugby for the sake of enjoyment, having fun and to wear the colours, and that is fine.”

De Souza said rugby was, in fact, a platform preparing the young players to be competitive.

“It’s not just rugby, but a life pathway,” he said.

“We help these kids with the transition from school kids into adulthood.

“So the mental side is definitely playing a huge role.

“It is also helping get them mentally prepared to compete because it is a dog-eat-dog world out there, and we need them to be able to compete both physically and mentally.”

For much of the year, there were doubts over whether the tournament itself would go ahead as planned. The recent Ebola outbreak in parts of East Africa created uncertainty after Rugby Africa postponed the Africa Cup Sevens in Mauritius as a public health precaution.

De Souza feared the Barthes Trophy could suffer the same fate.

Instead, Rugby Africa retained the August 5-16 dates, but shifted the tournament from the newly built Hoima City Stadium to Muteesa II Stadium in Wankulukuku, Kampala.

The revised schedule also gave De Souza something he had long wanted – more preparation time and a better chance of assembling his strongest squad, including foreign-based players. The Junior Sables are now entering the final stretch of their preparations with scrimmage matches against senior opposition designed to settle combinations and raise the physical intensity ahead of the tournament.

Several players who featured on the South African tour are expected to form the backbone of the final squad. A 43-man squad remains in camp, with De Souza expected to name his final 23-man travelling party on July 18 before one last training camp ahead of the opening match against Kenya. For De Souza, the difference between this campaign and the previous two has not simply been more matches.

It has been having enough time to build a team.

“After back-to-back losses at home, my cry in the background was always game time and preparation time,” said De Souza.

“There is a difference between the two. When you talk about game time, you’re actually going to prepare for a game.

“However, prep time is working on skill sets, working on systems, working on transition, working on processes and that takes time.

De Souza said he had players from different schools coming with different experiences.

“As an age-group coach, you get athletes from different schools, coming from different philosophies, but now you have got to get them to buy into the Shaun De Souza way,” he said.

“And that is what needs time.”

Nine teams will contest this year’s Barthes Trophy – hosts Uganda, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Namibia, Tunisia, Senegal, Madagascar, Côte d’Ivoire and Zambia.

The winners will qualify for next year’s World Rugby Under-20 Challenge.