24 October 2024 – With the COSAFA Women’s Championship in Gqeberha, Eastern Cape, expected to shift a gear in the coming days, coach Maud Khumalo’s youthful squad now their attention to Eswatini in their second match of the regional tournament.
A lone strike from Tshegofatso Motlogelwa settled COSAFA Banyana Banyana’s opening match of the tournament against Namibia on Tuesday and Khumalo will hope her players retain that winning feeling and also find more goals when they meet Eswatini in the second match of Group A at the Wolfson Stadium at 15h00 on Friday, 25 October 2024.
Khumalo said their main focus going into tomorrow’s group match will be on keeping the winning momentum and securing maximum points.
“We plan to pick up where we left off against Namibia and we need to score goals,” the coach said. “It’s more of an emphasis on scoring goals and making sure that we collect maximum points so that we don’t put ourselves under pressure in the group stages and things like that. It is more on planning to score more goals, but we are also not going to undermine Eswatini.”
Captain Thalea Smidt said she is proud of the way the team performed against Namibia.
“I think the team did fairly well, I think we got what we set out to do, and the objective was to win. We would have loved to score more goals, however, I think the most important thing for us on the day was getting the three points and we managed to do that.”
Smidt said they need to make better use of the many opportunities they create and not leave anything to chance.
“The main focus for us in tomorrow’s game is on taking care of the ball more, being more comfortable, not rushing our decisions and most importantly when creating opportunities, to make sure we bury them and be more clinical”.
