Africa-Press – Lesotho. Lesotho goes without representation at the ongoing 2021 Netball Africa Cup in Namibia as the national netball team did not leave on Saturday owing to financial constraints.
The games started yesterday and will continue until next week Tuesday – November 16th in Windhoek, Namibia. According to Lesotho Netball Association (LNA) Public Relations Officer (PRO) Telang Machela, the team was
expected to leave the country on November 6th and was to tie up in the first match yesterday. The opening clash game was therefore retied between Uganda and Tanzania.
“Unfortunately Team Lesotho did not make it to the tournament because of lack of finances. The Lesotho National
Olympic Committee [LNOC] had granted M110, 000.00 to the team as funding for food and accommodation, catered for this event. However, the association also
requested M60, 000.00 from Lesotho Sports and Recreation Commission [LSRC] to meet transport costs, which was not allocated due to financial crisis,” Machela said.
He showed that international competitions are supposed to be fully funded by the government because this is where the country weighs its performance in the form of rankings in comparison
to other countries and also gets the opportunity to participate in other recognized competitions such as Commonwealth Games. “Countries which qualify in
these types of games get trophies. Participating teams also acquire funds through assistance of Africa Netball in collaboration with International Netball
Federation (INF). Also, failure to participate in the tournaments increases chances to be penalized or removed from the tournaments,” he insisted. Machela said the main tournaments
that LNA is looking forward to include the Netball World Cup Qualifiers tournament that will be next year in Cape Town on the date to be announced and
the first ever Men’s Netball tournament that will be held in Morocco starting from March 29th to April 05th 2022. Asked about how LNA League is going so far, he said it started immediately after all sport codes
were permitted to resume games in the midst of Covid-19 pandemic. “The final games are yet to be played; we are looking forward to have a meeting after the
end of African Union Sports Council (AUSC) Region 5 Youth Games to prepare for the next league that will kick-start on January or early February 2022.
He attested that team Lesotho is ready for the upcoming AUSC Region 5 Youth Games which will begin early December in the country whereby Women Netball Team Lesotho will be facing Malawi.
“We were hoping that following failure to attend the 2021 Netball Africa Cup, at least under 18 Women Netball Team will be send off in order to prepare for the imminent AUSC Region 5 Youth Games,” he said.
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