peterMehluli Sibanda, Senior Sports Reporter
THE Zimbabwe men’s sevens rugby team, the Cheetahs left the country yesterday headed to Chile for the World Rugby Sevens Challenger Series.
Coached the by Graham Kaulback and captaied by Kudzai Mashawi, the Cheetahs have been preparing for the tournament for weeks, with the final squad announced in June.
Kaulback is expecting a competitive tournament seeing that the Cheetahs have been unlucky in the past.
“As always, it will be a very competitive tournament.
We have come close in the past and we will take it one game at a time, give it our all, focus on our key processes and hopefully the outcomes will take care of themselves,’’ said Kaulback.
In Chile, Zimbabwe face Hong Kong on Friday, with Tonga and Jamaica their opponents the following day.
Zimbabwe will also use the tournament to prepare for next month’s Rugby World Cup Sevens in Cape Town, South Africa. Kaulback indicated that they want to name final squad for the World Cup at the end of this month.
“We are working with a squad of about 20 players for the World Cup and we will look to name the final squad for the World Cup in August.
We have Shingi Katsvere in our mix who joined us from the Sables.
Apart from him, we are working with a majority of players who are locally based and almost 7’s specialists at this stage as is the growing “best practise” for 7s performance worldwide,’’ he said.
derick.khumalo