Malawi Queens’ participation in Africa tourney hangs in balance
The Malawi Queens’ participation at the 2015 Africa Netball Championship in Botswana hangs in the balance, Netball Association of Malawi (NAM) president Rosy Chinunda confirmed on Tuesday.
Chinunda said the last gasp shifting of the tournament from Namibia has posed serious logistical challenges to the local netball governing body. The tournament runs from June 27 to July 3 2015 in Gaborone.
The Queens are former Africa champions after surrendering the crown to rivals South Africa at Blantyre Youth Centre (BYC) in 2013.
Malawi and most teams that participated at the 2015 Diamonds Challenge Netball Series in Durban had plans to proceed from South Africa to Namibia, only to learn during the tournament that the event has been shifted.
“We had asked Netball South Africa to instead of buying us return tickets, buy tickets for us to proceed to Namibia. With this development, we had the tickets to Namibia cancelled and for us to come back, we had a lot of challenges,” explained Chinunda.
She accused the Netball Association of South Africa of making rushed decisions, which she noted, had inconvenienced other teams such as Uganda and Zambia as they had already bought tickets and paid for visas to Namibia.
“We await the decision from our sponsor Airtel by close of business today. We have since sent our players home. We may just decide to go in camp for the World Cup to be played in August in Australia,” she said.
The countries expected to take part in the 2015 Africa Netball Cup include Malawi, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Kenya, Swaziland, Tanzania and South Africa. Namibia, who were originally meant to host the event but withdrew late last month, will miss the event.
Xinhua News Agency reported on Monday that Uganda’s national netball team (She Cranes) are focused on the 2015 Africa Netball championship.
“We had four good games in the Diamond Challenge Cup in South Africa and need to use the few days to correct certain things before traveling to Botswana,” She Cranes head coach Fred Mugerwa told Xinhua on Sunday as the team returned from South Africa.
