Kenya hockey queens vow to dethrone South Africa

By ELIZABETH MBURUGU

With 13 days remaining before the long awaited hockey Africa Cup of Nations cum World Cup qualifier kicks off in Nairobi, Kenya’s finest ladies are ready to grab top honours.

City Park stadium will be a battle ground from November 18 to 24. The home queens have vowed to fight tooth and nail to dethrone South Africa.

They are intensely training and are ready to put up a spectacular performance.                                 According to the National Women’s Team Assistant Tactician Wycliffe Ongori, his charges are fully prepared to battle it out with their opponents in search of continental glory.

“We are ready for the task ahead of us, everyone is committed and we will put up a hard fight,” he said.

 The team has been training for over six month now following the postponement of the event that was earlier set for the September 25 to October 5 after the terror attack at Westgate Mall.

“The postponement had a negative impact on us and we lost momentum but we have bounced back. The team is in high spirits and we are going for nothing less than victory,” he added.

The team has been playing a series of friendly matches, the most recent one resulting in the 6-0 thumping of Sliders over the weekend.                                          Attacking midfielder Pauline Naise is also confident her team will do well.                                                 “We will win gold. That’s what Kenya should expect from us,” she said.

She also raised concern over lack of international exposure for the team but insisted they were good enough to beat their opponents.

Good training

“We never play international matches but that should not be a reason to worry. We have undergone good training and we are ready to play,” she added.

Continental hockey bigwigs like Nigeria and Egypt withdrew their participation citing different reasons with the latter citing  lack of training time after the political uprising in the North African country.

Namibia and Seychelles also pulled out of the tournament while Zimbabwe had not shown interest.

South Africa are defending champions in both categories and hosts Kenya have vowed to dethrone them.

Ghana will send a men and women’s team while Tanzania whose ladies were already in the country when the tournament was rescheduled are also expected.

The ladies who finished second in the Olympic qualifiers behind South Africa in Bulawayo Zimbabwe will be on a revenge mission.

They suffered a 5-0 defeat to their old foes South Africa and will be seeking to redeem themselves on home soil.

“We lost to South Africa but this is the only opportunity we have to beat them and prove that we are good enough,” national team goalkeeper Josephine Ataro said.

“We had problems with our defence but we have worked on it and we are determined to win.”

The teams are currently on a non residential training and will join camp later.

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