Gerald Mutsvairo
JUNIOR Sables coach Shaun De Souza has declared his charges ready ahead of their scheduled departure today for Nairobi, Kenya for the Barthes trophy.
At the Barthes trophy tournament which starts on Saturday, Zimbabwe will come up against Namibia, Madagascar, Zambia, Kenya, Senegal, Tunisia, and Côte d’Ivoire.
The Junior Sables had an opportunity to work on final touches when they played a warm-up match against Bulawayo side Consha Barbarians at Old Hararians on Tuesday leaving De Souza a happy man.
“We are as ready as we can be, we had good preparations. We have young players and I think ninety percent of the squad is available,” he said. “This is a good stepping stone for the squad; we would like to bring back the trophy home and move on to next year. If we do that and go with the same will definitely improve
“This is a planned journey. We knew we needed to travel to Kenya because we never had constructive rugby for about two years. We needed to take the boys back to the foundation level and introduce them to this high-performance system. It has worked well with the team.”
De Souza continued: “At this stage, Tunisia are an unknown entity, they can simply come blowing hot or cold. We don’t know what to expect but we will take each game as it comes. We will do our best and make sure we play as if this is our last game.
“The plan was to have a big squad. We wanted to be as inclusive as possible. We used a talent identification process where we picked players from all over the country. We gave the players a fair chance to prove themselves.”
