Queens ranking at risk
Malawi Queens risk surrendering their position if they miss the seven-day 2015 Africa Netball Championship starting this Sunday in Botswana, Netball Association of Malawi (NAM) president Rosy Chinunda has admitted.
It has transpired that the International Netball Federation (INF) would, when calculating the next rankings, not consider results of the five 2015 Diamonds Challenge Netball Series games the Queens played in Durban, South Africa up to Friday, but the Botswana event.
Malawi could miss out on more than eight games they would have played in Botswana alongside the hosts, defending champions and rivals South Africa (twice), Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Swaziland, Kenya and Namibia.
INF bases its rankings on at least eight consecutive games played after a previous review, Chinunda admitted.
“The Diamond Challenge was just an invitational event for the South Africans and that is why in its three editions, no other invited team has won it. With the Africa Championship, INF actually assigns it umpires and use the competition for rankings,” Chinunda observed.
As we went to press, NAM and the Ministry of Youth Development and Sports could not come out clearly on the estimated K40 million funding for the trip to Gaborone.
“Tangoti jenkha (we are in dilemma); waiting for government. We have given ourselves up to this Friday. As for our sponsors, Airtel, their funding is for talent identification and camp training. Government takes care of the rest including air tickets,” Chinunda said.
NAM, according to Chinunda, submitted a budget of K150 million covering expenses for the Diamond Challenge, the Africa Cup and World Cup to be staged in Australia this August.
Chinunda said the last-gasp shifting of the Africa tournament from Namibia has posed serious logistical challenges to NAM. The Queens surrendered the Africa crown to rivals South Africa at the Blantyre Youth Centre in 2013.
“We had asked Netball South Africa to instead of buying us return tickets, buy tickets for us to proceed to Namibia. With this development, we had the tickets to Namibia cancelled and for us to come back, we had a lot of challenges,” she said.
Jameson Ndalama, director of sports in the Ministry of Youth Development and Sports yesterday said Chinunda called his office seeking funding for the Botswana trip and “since I was learning for the first time that the team was back, I asked her to furnish us full information.”
Airtel public relations manager Edith Tsilizani said she had read in the press that the team was seeking funding “as we gave them money for both camps.”
Queens coach Peace Chawinga-Kalua yesterday said she was in the dark about the trip to Botswana, “but if the trip fails then it is going to be a big set-back as this was the platform that could have helped us fine tune ahead of the World Cup.” n
