The Sunday Mail
Tinashe Kusema
Deputy Sports Editor
FACE to face with an old friend now turned rival, a long mitigated route to France 2023 and a second bite of the cherry for some of the country’s budding rugby players.
These are some of the highlights and sub-plots likely to unfold during the course of the year, as the Zimbabwe Sables face quite a busy schedule.
The halls of the Zimbabwe Rugby Union were a hive of activity last week as news filtered that the Sables had retained their slot at the SuperSport Rugby Challenge and will take part in the tournament for the second year running.
The South Africa Rugby Union confirmed as much.
Zimbabwe were drawn alongside South African provincial sides Western Province, Border, Sharks XV, Free State XV, Boland Cavaliers, SWD and EP Elephants.
“Yes, this is good news for our Sables team,” said ZRU chief executive Sifiso Made.
“If you notice, from last year, this tournament was integral in helping the Sables win the Victoria Cup. At the start of the year; we lost some of our seasoned and senior players and we had to start from scratch.
“We assembled an academy side, which went into the competition with the sole purpose of giving our youngsters some much needed game time, helping them gel with some seasoned players.
“That enabled us to come up with a formidable Sables outfit, that went on to do duty, at senior level and win the Victoria Cup,” he said.
More of the same is expected, this time around, as the SuperSport Rugby Challenge will act as dress rehearsal for the reformatted Africa Cup.
In the rechristened tournament, 12 of the continent’s second-tier teams have been divided into four pools of three teams that will play against each other in a two-legged encounter (home and away format).
The winner of each group will progress to the final tournament; where they will meet at one venue and battle it out until there is a winner.
That winning nation will earn a place at the 2023 Rugby World Cup in France.
Zimbabwe have been drawn against Tunisia and Ghana and it is the match-up against the latter that promises to be quite the duel given the Sables connection in the Eagles’ camp.
Former Zimbabwe coach Collin Osbourne is currently Ghana Rugby’s technical director and skills coach and has been quite the busy bee in preparations for this tournament and, in particular, the match-ups against Zimbabwe.
Osborne recently completed a successful week of training with the Ghana Rugby men’s and women’s national squads, the Ghana Eagles, as the West African nation began its preparations for the Africa Cup.
The Eagles got into the pool stages of the new Rugby Africa Cup when they beat the Botswana Vultures in the “Battle of the Birds of Prey” on November 23 last year in Elmina, Ghana, in an elimination match.
“The main reason I made this visit to Ghana at this time was to get the forwards familiar with the new scrum machine,” Osbourne is reported to have said.
“It has made a significant difference to the way we can coach the scrum; the improvement in individual and the collective technique has been impressive in just five days.
“We also worked hard on our line-outs and put structures in place to help us to ensure we can win first phase ball.
“Good progress has been made and I’m sure the hard work will continue while I’m away,” he said.
Aiding his cause to upset the Sables is Ghana’s head coach and native of Zimbabwe Lovemore Kuzorera, but their presence appears to have no effect on Zimbabwe’s preparations.
“We have nothing but the utmost respect for Collin (Osbourne); his expertise, his valuable contributions to our own rugby, but the thing is modern coaching doesn’t put too much emphasis on your opponents and what they know about you.
“That is public knowledge and one can get game tapes at the click of a button. We are not fretting about that.
“What is important is how you prepare play to strengths and iron out your weaknesses. That is exactly the approach we hope to adopt.
“Coach Dawson will definitely be in charge of the Academy side and the senior Sables, and will have ample time to prepare his charges.
“He submitted a draft programme last year and the SuperSport Rugby Challenge was stalling us. Now that is out of the way, we expect both the coach and players to get right back to business,” Made said.
