The Zimbabwe national rugby Sevens team completed day one of the Confederation of African Rugby Sevens Africa Cup in a relatively good position to progress to the semi-finals despite losing one match to rivals Kenya at Prince Edward High School yesterday.
By Our Staff
Gilbert Nyamutsamba’s charges won three of their four group encounters and lost once and have a do-or-die match against Namibia to determine who finishes second in the group today.
Kenya are top on 12 points, while Namibia are edging the Cheetahs on points superior score aggregate with both teams tied second on 10 points ahead of the potentially explosive decider.
Zimbabwe kicked off their campaign with an unconvincing 26-16 victory over Nigeria before falling to 17 -19 to Kenya in a thrilling two point match.
The Cheetahs bounced back to beat a battling Uganda 19-12 and concluded their fixtures with a 55-0 rout of Ivory Coast.
Nyamutsamba expressed his satisfaction with the team’s effort.
“We came here expecting difficult matches and the tournament has proved difficult for us so far but I’m happy the team improved game by game, which is good because we showed a lot of consistency. We did not play our best rugby so hopefully on day two we will be at our best to finish off the job,” he said.
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“Against Kenya the guys made two little mistakes and we lost the game. That’s Sevens rugby for you but that game was one of our best and we are still in contention to achieve our objectives,” he added.
Zimbabwe are bidding to finish the tournament at least in the top three and progress to the Hong Kong World Sevens Series, the next stage in a quest to attain core member status as well as progress to the next level of the Olympic qualifiers.
