Cheetahs coach bemoans Sevens Rugby World Cup preps

ZIMBABWE national sevens rugby team coach, Gilbert Nyamutsamba is not happy with the way the Cheetahs are gearing up for the Sevens Rugby World Cup to be held in San Francisco, United States of America in July.

Nyamutsamba is pained by the fact that all the requests he made when the Cheetahs qualified for the World Cup at the Africa Cup held in Uganda last year have not been fulfilled. He feels that the country expects too much from the national sporting teams yet so little is given to these sides to succeed.

“Where the issue is and I have always said it is not only in rugby but generally our sport in Zimbabwe, as a sporting nation we do not put in as much as we expect to get. We always expect good results, we expect the results but we do not invest enough, speaking of investment I am actually talking about player welfare and the programmes that actually support a team to be ready for the said events, we do not do that,’’ Nyamutsamba said.

The Cheetahs get into camp in Harare tomorrow to prepare for the Kwese Sports Victoria Falls Sevens, a tournament which takes place on Saturday and Sunday at Victoria Falls Primary School with Zimbabwe as the defending champions. He will take the opportunity to assess players with the World Sevens Series Qualifier in Hong Kong in mind.

“Right now I am going to take a team to Kwese, I am going to take a team to a training camp of three to four days, truly speaking are we saying with the kind of results that we are expecting at Kwese or in Hong Kong we can do so much in those three four days, that is close to impossible with the results that we are expecting,’’ he said.

The camp in Harare from tomorrow will have 30 players, with only 24 to make the final two squads, the Cheetahs and the Goshawks with the teams heading to Victoria Falls on Friday. From Victoria Falls, 18 will get into camp in Harare for Hong Kong before the team is trimmed down to 12 prior to departure on 1 April.

Nyamutsamba is a concerned man with the World Cup just four months away as the corporate world has not shown any interest in assisting the team. The Cheetahs still have Delta Beverages as the major sponsor through their Zambezi Lager brand.

“The World Cup is four months away, we cannot actually say this team is the team that is going to the World Cup with the way we have been preparing, that’s a fact. When I speak of stakeholders, I am speaking of rugby lovers, the fans themselves, corporates, this is a team going to the World Cup, we don’t have corporates tripping on each other to be part of this, we are still with our big sponsor, no one else has actually come in significantly,’’ moaned Nyamutsamba.

A lot of promises were made when the Cheetahs came back from Uganda in October last year but according to Nyamutsamba, nothing has been delivered.

In Hong Kong, the Cheetahs have been drawn in the same pool against Papua New Guinea, Germany and Hong Kong. Nyamutsamba made it clear that with the preparations the team has had, they would be lucky to even get to the semi-finals of the Qualifier.

“We are going to Hong Kong, I have seen the draw, if we make the semi-finals we will be lucky based on the way we have prepared, I don’t want to hide that, to lie to people that we are trying to qualify, no. We are going to play our best, I am going to ask the players to put their bodies on the line by the way that we have prepared,’’ he said.

In Victoria Falls, the Cheetahs have been drawn to play their group matches against Kenya Shujaa, False Bay, Lesotho and Zambia B Nyamutsamba again does not want to give the nation false hopes that they will defend the title they won last year because other teams at the tournament have prepared better. He is perplexed as to why Zimbabwe still continues to undermine countries that actually prepare for tournaments better than them.

On the World Cup, Nyamutsamba said if Zimbabwe do not lift a gear up, they might go to USA just to add up numbers. While the prospects for Victoria Falls and Hong Kong look gloomy, there is still time to rectify the mistakes before the World Cup.