NAMIBIA’s national men and women’s hockey teams have been announced for the Indoor Africa Cup in South Africa next month, although the women’s team can still change over the next week.
The Namibia Hockey Union (NHU) announced the teams on Wednesday evening for the Africa Indoor Cup which will be held in Ballito, South Africa from 25 to 27 September. The tournament will serve as a qualifier for the Indoor World Cup which will be held in Liege, Belgium from 3 to 7 February 2021, with only the winning men and women’s teams qualifying for the global showpiece.
The national women’s coach, Erwin Handura, however said that his squad had not been finalised yet.
“That’s not my final team. We were supposed to have a training camp from 13 to 16 August to select the final team, but then the new lockdown guidelines were announced so it didn’t take place. I even asked the Namibia Sport Commission for special permission to hold the training camp, but it was not approved.
Ï wanted to give two players from the coast – Zanne-Marie Niemand and Anri Els – a chance to prove themselves and to see how they would fit into my plans, because it would be unfair not to do so. They arrived on the 11th and then joined our first session on the 12th, but the next day the lockdown was announced so we couldn’t train anymore.
“But we still have time to change the team till 4 September when we have to apply for national colours at the Sport Commission,” he said.
The vice president of the NHU, Coenie Wessels, concurred.
“The international hockey federation, FIH, still allows one to make changes till 24 hours before a match so that can still be done, but we submitted the names because we didn’t want to miss the deadline. But I’d say that squad is about 95 percent certain, Erwin just wanted to give the two coastal players a fair chance to make the team,” he said.
Handura, however, said the coronavirus pandemic had thrown their preparations into disarray.
“The players I have selected are good, but we are not well-prepared. We were supposed to have had four or five training camps by now, but due to the lockdown we haven’t even had one yet.
“At the 2018 World Cup we had four training camps so we were well prepared, but now we are not and we can’t expect the same results. If we are not well prepared we cannot expect to do well,” he said.
The women’s team is very young with only the captain Magreth Mengo older than 23, while the team includes six players under 20.
Despite their youth, the team is quite experienced with half of the members having represented Namibia at the 2018 Indoor World Cup in Germany.
The women’s team is as follows:
Petro Stoffberg, Magreth Mengo, Gillian Hermanus, Sunelle Ludwig, Dure Boshoff, Kiana Cormack, Kaela Schimming, Phia Gerber, Tara Myburgh, Cele Wessels, Danja Meyer and Jivanka Kruger.
The Namibian men’s team is also very young, with eight of the 12 players still under 22 years of age.
The men’s team is as follows:
DJ Strauss, Richter van Rooyen, Ernest Jacobs, Dakota Hansen, David Brits, Nico Neethling, Cody vd Merwe, Liam Hermanus, Damien Schutz, Fagan Hansen, Brynn Cleak and Percy Barthram.
The national men’s coach Trevor Cormack could not be reached for comment.
