Africa-Press – Lesotho. Men’s netball took centre stage on Sunday at the Police Training College (PTC) as the sport’s footprint in the country continues to grow. Like the women’s game, men’s netball is gaining popularity and, although seeing men playing netball would have raised eyebrows in the past, that is no longer the case – men’s matches are now attracting big crowds and it was no different at PTC.
The weekend’s action was the second leg of the Male Championships where Rovers lead the table with 36 points followed by Lesotho Mounted Police Service (LMPS) with 32.
The first leg was in Mafeteng last year and all the teams are level on games played with South Ocean sitting third at 30 points while Focus have collected 18.
Lesotho Correctional Service (LCS) and Lesotho Agricultural College (LAC) are bottom of the five-team table with 12 and four points respectively. Speaking to thepost, Rovers head coach, Palesa Kushe, said her side went into the weekend’s action confident of victory.
Rovers played twice on Sunday against LAC and Focus, and won both matches. In the first game, Rovers beat LAC 35-9 in a dominant performance but the second game was much closer.
Only two points separated the two teams with Rovers edging Focus 48-46. “Since my team performed well in the first leg (of the league in Mafeteng), I felt it in my blood that we would definitely take glory home,” Kushe said.
Her words were echoed by one of her players, Monaeshe Mabokoane, who said Rovers had problems in the first leg in terms of properly preparing for the games.
Mabokoane said because of rain and a lack of indoor facilities, their training programme was disturbed while they were also missing some players who were not able to travel to Mafeteng.
“We are a team that trains hard, it’s just that we had challenges with rain when we were training to go to Mafeteng, and we could not train well,” he said.
“We do not have indoor grounds and when we travelled to Mafeteng some of our players were not able to go because of transport especially because it was in mid-month,” Mabokoane said.
Rovers’ upturn in the second leg saw them claim first place in the league from South Ocean who were leading the table with 26 points after the first leg but now find themselves third. South Ocean will have to work hard to reclaim top spot from Rovers who appear to be in no mood to let their lead go.
Speaking to thepost, the president of the Lesotho Netball Association (LNA) Mary Mokoatli, said the weekend’s performance shows men’s netball is growing and that there is an appetite for it from spectators.
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