Banyana target sixth Cosafa Cup triumph
Only six players from last year ’ s winning team return in 2020
Banyana Banyana get the defence of their Cosafa Womens Championship title under way with a tricky fixture against Angola at the Isaac Wolfson Stadium in Port Elizabeth on Tuesday (3.30pm).
The South African women s national team have won the tournament a record six times and will be gunning for a fourth in a row having been drawn against Eswatini, Comoros and Angola in group A.
Coach Desiree Ellis, 57, is confident that her young squad will continue their dominance in the competition.
The Cosafa Cup is for local “players and it is always great to give new players a chance to prove themselves,” Ellis said. I have been impressed with “the work that the current crop of players has put in. The pretournament week will be an important one for us to polish up before the tournament starts.
Only six players from last year s winning squad have returned for the 2020 showdown.
Kwazakhele-born and former Sophakama Ladies FC player Sibulele Holweni is among the 20 players in Ellis squad
The 19-year-old will be playing her first Cosafa as part of the senior team, after missing out on last year s tournament due to examinations.
Holweni, who captained the U17 national team, was also part of the Banyana side which represented the country in the 2019 World Cup in France. We are going there to do our “best. It s been long since we trained as a team and coming back and training with the team is a lot different. But we will try to do everything in our power to make sure that we once again succeed in the Cosafa competition and also do better than last year,” the University of Western Cape defender said.
Her teammate Kaylin Swart shared her sentiments.
It was really hard to be out of “competition and just training normally, Swart said.
It has been painful thinking “what could have happened this year if the pandemic hadn t happened. We have so much to look forward to now.
We are excited to play Cosafa “because there was a time we were told the competition might not happen. When we got the news that it was on again, everybody was excited to get back together again because we are like a family.
It was tough because you “had to change your whole mindset after being told there will be a competition, when initially it was cancelled.”
This year Ellis will be without star players such as Bambanani Mbane, Refiloe Jane and Janine van Wyk.
I believe we are pretty professional “when it comes to that. As a national team there are always new faces coming in and new talent being scouted. Those who have been here “for a longer time need to set an example for the new ones. They have shown what they are capable of doing, so I think they just keep going,” Ellis said.