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Cheetahs searching for answers

AFTER a humiliating show at the International Rugby Board (IRB) Sevens World Series in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, last month, Zimbabweans have been searching for answers to the problems that have beset Zimbabwe’s Sevens rugby team.
The Cheetahs, as the team is affectionately known, has been under criticism and scrutiny after its poor show at the IRB Sevens Series where the team failed to register a single win.
But Donald Mangenje, the Cheetahs’ chairman, blamed lack of progress towards attaining core status, saying it stifles the growth of the shorter version of the game in the country.

“It was very difficult for us because the other teams were already in their fifth gear by the time we got there,” said Mangenje.
“Bear in mind as well that all the teams we played have IRB Core status and we are not. So they were already on their third leg of the tournament. They had come from the Gold Coast then Dubai the other week. They were already tuned up and carried on their match fitness,”  he said.

Mangenje also attributed the negative results to the preparations that the team had before the Sevens Series.
“We (Zimbabwe) were coming from practically nowhere except our local series (the Spar & Lion Lager Summer series) which lacks the same intensity that these other teams are exposed to. We also had a young team that we are trying to introduce and that all made it difficult,” Mangenje said.

Core status allows associations to be run professionally and comes with benefits such as participation in all the nine tournaments on the IRB World Sevens Series circuit.
At the moment, Zimbabwe only takes part in selected tournaments on the circuit on an invitational basis and players are contracted on a tournament to tournament basis.
Core status also comes with financial assistance from IRB which will allow more development programmes and widen teams’ scope of preparations.

To be fair, a lot went wrong for the national sevens rugby side at the Port Elizabeth tournament. To begin with, national Sevens rugby coach, Gilbert Nyamutsamba, did not make the trip to South Africa for personal reasons.
This left technical director,Liam Middletom and former Cheetahs vice-captain Daniel Hondo, who has been an integral  part of the Cheetahs for close to a decade before calling time on his illustrious career in the game four month ago, in charge of the team.

Zimbabwe went to South Africa without regular skipper Jacques Leitao and speed merchant Wensley Mbanje.
 The team had four uncapped players namely Brendon Boshi, Boyd Rouse, Biselele Tshamala, Lenience Tambwera and Hilton Mudariki.
The Cheetahs, the only non-core team at the third leg of the IRB World Sevens Series, finished bottom of Group D after losing all three matches to Samoa, Argentina and England, all core members of the IRB Sevens.
The team then went on to lose consolation matches to Australia in the Bowl quarter-finals and to Canada in the Shield semi-finals.

The Cheetahs only managed to score two tries in three matches starting with a 5-31 defeat to Argentina followed by another 7-35 defeat to England.
The Zimbabwean team then suffered a crashing 0-43 defeat against the Pacific Islanders, Samoans.

The situation worsened in the Bowl qualifier against Australia, with the Cheetahs losing 5-38. The national Sevens team then blew the last chance to salvage some pride in the Shield Qualifier against Canada, losing 10- 24, bringing Zimbabwe’s campaign to a miserable end.

The Cheetahs, which previously appeared at the Sevens Rugby World Cup four times (1991, 2001, 2009 and 2012), however, have been presented with another chance to try to repair its wrecked image.
They have been invited to participate in the HSBC World Sevens Series slated for March in Hong Kong.
The IRB recently altered its rules with the team winning the qualifying tournament in Hong Kong automatically promoted to IRB Sevens core status. This means that if Zimbabwe wins the qualifier like they did last year, they earn promotion to be an IRB core member.
  newsdesk@fingaz.co.zw