Warriors match off: Rukoro

THE Brave Warriors will not play an international friendly match against South Africa’s Bafana Bafana on November 5, the Namibia Football Association (NFA) chief executive officer, Barry Rukoro, announced yesterday.

The South African Football Association (Safa) this week announced that Bafana Bafana will be involved in two friendly matches on November 5 at Kimberley’s Absa Stadium, but Rukoro said this will not happen. “We have communicated to them that the Brave Warriors are not available for that date because we don’t want to play matches now.We are in a re-building process and aim to have competitive matches at a later stage in view of our current status of not being represented at both the African Nations Cup and World Cups in 2010,” he said.Namibia effectively bounced out of the two competitions during the qualifiers in their 1-0 loss to Kenya away, but redeemed themselves with a fabulous 4-2 win over Zimbabwe in their last match earlier this month.At the moment, the core players in the side are foreign-based and it will be a costly exercise for the association to bring them in for the South African friendly, especially the ones who are based in Europe.Namibia has most of its professional players scattered around in South Africa, donning the colours of premiership and first-division clubs in that country.Namibia’s locally based players could also not be considered for selection in their last few matches due to the inactivity of the domestic league season which has not yet started.Safa also announced that that Bafana’s international friendly against Cameroon is on November 19 in Rustenburg.”We have communicated to them that the Brave Warriors are not available for that date because we don’t want to play matches now.We are in a re-building process and aim to have competitive matches at a later stage in view of our current status of not being represented at both the African Nations Cup and World Cups in 2010,” he said.Namibia effectively bounced out of the two competitions during the qualifiers in their 1-0 loss to Kenya away, but redeemed themselves with a fabulous 4-2 win over Zimbabwe in their last match earlier this month.At the moment, the core players in the side are foreign-based and it will be a costly exercise for the association to bring them in for the South African friendly, especially the ones who are based in Europe.Namibia has most of its professional players scattered around in South Africa, donning the colours of premiership and first-division clubs in that country.Namibia’s locally based players could also not be considered for selection in their last few matches due to the inactivity of the domestic league season which has not yet started.Safa also announced that that Bafana’s international friendly against Cameroon is on November 19 in Rustenburg.