Junior Queens to miss Anoca games
The Netball Association of Malawi (NAM) has announced that the Malawi Under-21national netball team will not participate in the Association of National Olympic Committee Youth Games (Anoca) to be hosted by Botswana next month.
NAM president Rosy Chinunda confirmed the development in Lilongwe on Tuesday.
Chinunda said they have received communication from the organisers that Malawi is not eligible to take part because of missing the deadline of sending profiles of the players to the organisers.
“The issue is still on birth certificates and national identities. That is the information we were unable to provide in time. In the absence of national identities, each participating country is supposed to provide players’ birth certificates a month before the start of the tournament and we could not meet the deadline,” said Chinunda.
Failure to travel to Botswana automatically means Malawi has missed an opportunity to participate in the 2014 Youth Olympics to be held in Nanjing, China.
The Anoca Games, which comprise 22 sports disciplines, will run from May 22 at the University of Gaborone.
In 2009, Malawi also missed out on the Zone VI tournament held in South Africa for the same reasons.
“In an effort to curb age-cheating, the organisers are strict on production of birth certificates. We cannot fault them. As netball president, I take full responsibility for the failure to participate. But I must say that the exercise was beyond us as it required a lot of money, which we did not have,” said Chinunda.
