Queens’ coaching jobs up for grabs again

The Malawi Netball Queens’ coaching jobs are up for grabs again two months after interim coach Griffin Saenda and his deputy Mary Waya steered the national team to a fifth-place finish at the Fast5 Netball Series in New Zealand.

The Netball Association of Malawi (NAM) president Rosy Chinunda told The Nation yesterday they are expected to scrutinise CVs of prominent coaches in the country so as to come up with a new pair of tacticians that will take the national team to the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, Scotland in July.

She, however, said the coaches will once again be hired on temporary arrangement as they wait for the next national budget to incorporate a special package for permanent instructors, who will be taken on board early 2015.

Chinunda said the yet-to-be- named trainers will take the Queens into their first camp training early February in preparation for the prestigious international competition.

“The Commonwealth Games are big events; we need serious tacticians to take the Queens to glory. Although we still cherish the previous coaching panel of Saenda and Waya, it is not automatic that both will retain the posts.

“We have a pool of excellent coaches on the land and we have to scrutinise their CVs again to see who is capable of helping us to win medal at this year’s Games,” Chinunda said.

The new coaches’ first assignment will be the Queens’ Commonwealth Games encounter against the world’s number 11 team Northern Ireland on July 24. The two sides have been drawn in group-B, which also has top-ranked New Zealand, fourth-positioned Jamaica, 12th-placed St Lucia and 13th-rated Scotland.

The NAM head said the new interim coaches will also be partly responsible for the Under-21 Association of National Olympic Committees of Africa (Anoca) Games in Botswana in September and the Under-20 Zone VI Championships in Zimbabwe in November.

This will be the second time within three months for NAM to name a new set-up of the coaching panel. Saenda, Waya and Peace Chawinga-Kalua were coaches when the side finished as runners-up during the African Netball Championships Malawi hosted last June. However, NAM dropped Chawinga-Kalua in September.