BRU seeks answers on Sevens� team losses
Calistus Kolantsho | Wednesday December 3, 2014 10:47
BRU president, Elijah Jones did not hide the union’s disappointment over the results, which saw the team suffer five defeats in six matches.In their first game on Saturday, Botswana went down 33-7 to Madagascar before succumbing to Zambia 19-17. The team lost to Senegal (19-10), Tunisia (17-12) and South Africa (29-0) with the only consolation coming from a 17-7 win over Nigeria.
Jones told Mmegi Sport yesterday that they are still to meet the delegation that travelled to Zimbabwe to get feed back.
He said the team could have lost due to the poor conditioning of the players and low concentration levels. He stated that BRU needs to review its talent identification programme.
“It is important for us to start preparing for the future. We have to groom players now if we are to go anywhere,” he said.
The Sevens team coach, Seabe Shine Gabatladiwe said Botswana still has a chance of qualifying for the All Africa Games despite finishing outside the top eight in Zimbabwe. Botswana finished 10th out of 12 teams that took part in the tournament. The team will now battle lowly ranked teams such as Swaziland and Lesotho in a late bid to secure a place at the All Africa Games. Gabatladiwe said their target was a top eight finish but despite failing to achieve the result, the team had shown improvement.
He said in 2013, Botswana was 12th and this year’s finish is an improvement. Dates and venue of the next tournament will be announced in the next two weeks.
Gabatladiwe said the current squad must be kept and he is keen to continue in his job. “We tried our best against strong opposition. Countries that we played against are either professionals or semi-professionals. We scored first in all our games but teams just came from behind to get a win. That was an indication that our conditioning was not up to scratch,” he said.
He pointed out that other countries have better resources when compared to Botswana. Gabatladiwe said the preparations for the tournament started late and players were unable to resist pressure like in the match against Zambia in the bowls finals. He explained that Botswana failed to utilise their last conversion and that is where things went wrong.