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Mighty Warriors, the senior women football team, are back in serious business when they take their quest for honours and continental glory to Cameroon as they plunge into battle at the 2016 Women’s Africa Cup of Nations.
The biennial tournament, now in its 10th edition, kicks off tomorrow and will run until December 3 in the West African country’s capital Yaoundé.
Joining seven other nations at the eight-team tournament, the Mighty Warriors are in probably the tougher of the two sets; with their Group A comprising hosts Cameroon, Egypt, and South Africa. Defending champions Nigeria, Ghana, Mali and debutants Kenya make up Group B.
For good measure and purposes of continuity, the senior women football coach Shadreck Mlauzi retained most of the players that did duty for the nation at the Olympic Games held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in August.
This being the second major tournament the Mighty Warriors will participate in, they are expected to improve on how they fared at the Rio Games. The momentum and experience gathered during their Brazilian excursion should come in handy and help them navigate the Afcon challenge and progress to the next round. The top two teams from each group will make the semi-finals.
Even as our ladies left the land of the Samba empty-handed after a not-too-bad-nor-so-sad outing in a Group F that featured such global heavyweights as eventual champions Germany, Canada and Australia – scoring in every match against their more fancied opponents – they should have the tactical and technical stamina to stand their own against their African sisters.
In Group A at Afcon, the Mighty Warriors will resume rivalry with neighbours Banyana Banyana of South Africa while also renewing hostility with the ‘Les Lionnes’ of Cameroon. Although the hosts have qualified for every edition of the competition since its inception in 1998, Mlauzi’s charges would fancy their chances of another upset after they dumped the West Africans out of the Olympics Games during continental qualifiers earlier this year.
Our women’s football team have the pedigree and can do well at the championships because the fact that we are among the eight at the finals, when we secured passage after overcoming Shepolopolo of Zambia in the final qualifier, means that we are as good as any of the qualified teams. The idea is not to give too much respect to our opponents, but just play to our strengths while also exploiting their weaknesses.
While the team did not get the kind of preparations they had wanted, defined by adequate camping time and friendly matches in order to run the rule over and fine tune the squad, approaching the tournament with the right mentality and getting geared can still see us do well at the tournament.
The Mighty Warriors have been impressive thus far this year and flown the Zimbabwean flag high that progressing to the semi-finals will raise the bar and set the tone for the Warriors to emulate the feat at the men’s Afcon in Gabon next January.
The team was expected to leave the country for their Younde base yesterday.
Go, Mighty Warriors, Go! Goals, Mighty Warriors, Goals!
Mighty Warriors Afcon Group A fixtures:
vs South Africa (19 November, 18:30, Yaoundé Stadium)
vs Egypt (22 November, 19:00, Yaoundé Stadium)
vs Cameroon (25 November, 16:00, Yaoundé Stadium)
It’s Game On, Play On!
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