The Botswana National Rugby team, the Vultures have dropped down to the lower league after losing their games at the Confederation of African Rugby (CAR) in Cameroon.
The team, which arrived in the country last week, will now play in Africa’s band D in the coming games next year.
Going into this year’s CAR championships, the Vultures, though not very hopeful of gaining promotion were optimistic of retaining their status in the CAR third tier C band.
Prior to the Cameroon CAR games, the Vultures had not had enough preparations and had been without a coach after the departure of former coach Neal Gouws who had to return home to South Africa for family reasons.
Commenting on the Vultures’ trip to Cameroon, the President of the Botswana Rugby Union (BRU), Bob Lekan, said he was impressed with the team’s performance despite its losses and relegation to the fourth tier division in the African rugby league.
Lekan, who was also the team’s Head of Mission at the Cameroon games, says while losing all matches may seem bad, the losses are not a true reflection of the games.
Botswana lost 12 ÔÇô30 to Senegal in one game before losing their other game 17 ÔÇô 12 to Zambia. “I think our main downfall in the championships was stage fright as well as our physical conditioning,” Lekan said.
Against Senegal, Lekan said the team started very slowly and conceded many points in the first half, only to rally back in the second half.
Against Zambia, the BRU president says the team dominated but failed to make their domination count.
“Against Zambia, we failed to convert at least three penalties which could have given us nine points and won us the match. We also had the same problem of converting penalties during our encounter with Senegal,” Lekan added.
The BRU president said he has no doubt that the Vultures team has talent in abundance but it was let down by lack of adequate preparations.
“We (BRU) will be meeting with the technical team in the near future to start charting our way forward and to start early preparations for next year’s tournament. We are hopeful that the core of the current team will be retained as it is a very youthful team and that they start
preparations for next year’s championships as early as this year,” Lekan further added. He says they are already arranging for friendly games with both Swaziland and Zimbabwe to give the team much needed practice as part of their preparations for the coming year.
He says they will also be looking at the
physical conditioning of the local players to make them ready for the rigours of coming up against the physically imposing opponents from the African continent.
Lekan says one way to do that would be to arrange for the players to have gym time so that they can toughen up some more to make them not fear physical confrontation on the field of play.
Commenting on the Cameroon trip, one of the team’s experienced players,
Lesedi Keekae, said the Vultures’ physical conditioning was the team’s major
problem and needs to be addressed urgently if the team is to compete successfully.
“There is no doubt that we have very talented players but my belief is that we now have to make a scientific physical approach to the game. If you look at our game against Senegal, who had brought players who play in the French league, we matched them but our physical presence was a letdown. We also took a long time to get into the game and they won the first half. We, however, managed to fight back and won the second half,” Keekae added.
Keekae also lamented the late preparations and the unavailability of experienced senior players saying it affected the team’s performance.
The Vultures had to do without, among others, team captain Munyaradzi Mhonda as well as the influential players Tefo Keothepile and Katlego Mohutsiwa.
