By GRACE CHAILE –
Uganda 51 Zambia 48
ZAMBIA’S pursuit of a place at the Sydney 2015 World Netball Championship suffered a setback yesterday when the Chipolopolo Queens lost their opening match of the 2014 Africa Netball Championship to Uganda.
The Africa Netball World qualifiers that got underway on Sunday in Gaborone, Botswana, saw Zambia taking on Uganda in a tightly contested Pool B match.
Zambia exhibited resilience both on shooting and defence with the first quarter narrowly finishing 9-10 in favour of Uganda who went on to enjoy a 21-24 second quarter lead but the third quarter ended tight at 35-all.
Goal Shooter Beauty Nakazwe terrorised the Uganda defence in the last quarter of the game when she utilised every scoring chance into a goal but sadly Zambia could not contain the East Africans who snatched a late victory.
Coach Pauline Nsombwe conceded that it was a tough match but congratulated the side for putting up a splendid performance against a Ugandan side ranked fourth on the continent.
“I am proud of the teams’ performance after this match.
“The played as a team and the margin shows you how tight and tough the match was. Focus shifts to tomorrow game’s against Swaziland which is a must win to lighten our chances of qualification” she said.
Netball Association of Zambia (NAZ) general secretary Pritchard Ngoma has backed the team to recover with a win over Swaziland.
“We may have gone down but not out of qualifying chances,” Ngoma said in an interview from Gaborone.
Meanwhile, hosts Botswana beat Zimbabwe 41-38 in the opening game of Pool A played on Sunday, while Kenya and Tanzania who are in Pool A’s were expected to play yesterday same for Pool B side Namibia and Swaziland.