ZIMBABWE men’s Under-20 handball team coach Tafadzwa Madure is clamouring for better preparations as the team sets sight on taking part in the International Handball Federation (IHF) Trophy Continental Phase Africa.
Last year, the team suffered whitewash defeats in their maiden appearance at the same competition in Brazzaville, Congo, due to poor preparations.
This year’s edition of the continental meet is scheduled for November 1 to 7 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
Zimbabwe will join Rwanda, Guinea, Congo, Cameroon, Madagascar, Nigeria, Ghana, Zambia and the hosts.
The team qualified for the competition after they clinched gold, for a second time in a row, at the Men’s IHF Trophy Zone 6 Africa which was hosted in the country in May.
After completing their one-week camp in the capital recently, Madure said there was need to hold friendly matches with other nations before the competition, but financial constraints have been taking a toll on their side.
“We are supposed to have two periodic camps before the main camp that we should do before departure for the competition. It is just that our federation is in financial crisis, but we really wanted the boys to get in camp for a month, where we will train and have more friendly matches against highly competitive teams like Zambia, Mozambique or Angola before we go to Ethiopia,” Madure said.
“It [the just-ended periodic camp] was more of conditioning players, in particular building muscular strength and endurance. The competition we are going to face in November is a tight and intense one so we should be there prepared thoroughly. This is a highly competitive tournament in Africa and going there for the second time, we need to show an improvement.”
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Madure highlighted the need to prepare players mentally since there is only one player in the team, Felix Manyani,who participated in the previous edition in Brazzaville.
“There are changes in the team since the games are on in November. We have a few players affected by exams and they won’t be part of the team so we went and selected players during NASH [National Association of Secondary School Heads] national games held in Mosi oa Tunya High School in Victoria Falls and Manama High School in Gwanda,” he said.
“We invited them during our last camps and we are looking forward to inviting others as well so that we can have a pool of players to choose our final team of 14 from.”
