By SANDRA MWILA –
ZAMBIA’S preparations for next week’s Africa Cup of Nations finals suffered a setback after Zimbabwe failed to show up for a friendly match scheduled for the National Sports Development Centre (NASDEC) in Lusaka at the weekend.
Both Zambia and Zimbabwe wanted to use the match to shape up for the Africa Cup of Nations that starts on March 14 in Nairobi, Kenya.
And in a bid not to disappoint fans who thronged the NASDEC Sports Hall, the Zambian officials decided to have the senior national team play against its junior side as a way of compensating the faithful fans that turned up for the match.
Handball Association of Zambia (HAZ) communication manager Josab Changa said in an interview at NASDEC that Zimbabwe had confirmed their participation but sadly only four players managed to arrive for the game.
“The game was supposed to start at 14:00 hours but we kept delaying hoping that other players will arrive to beef up the other players who arrived earlier as we were assured of their coming.
It, however, turned out that the Zimbabwean players were held up by the slow process of being cleared by their sports mother body,” he said.
The NASDEC hall was filled to capacity with fans that were ready to give support to the Zambian side. Fans, who had been in the hall waiting from as early as 14:00 hours, did not lose hope as they waited till 16:00 hours when it was decided that the Zambian teams will play each other.
Meanwhile, HAZ is scouting for K295, 000 to send a team to Kenya for the continental competition.
HAZ president Victor Bwalya-Banda said in a separate interview that the budget for the outing had been trimmed from K600, 000 to K308,000 following poor response from the business houses.
Banda said as a result, the association was forced to trim the number from 20 to 16, thereby dropping two officials from the contingent.