After booking a ticket to the August-September world Cup in Japan, Africa Nations Championship [gold and Silver medalists] Kenya and Algeria now turn their attention to next week’s world grand Prix in Mexico and Kazakhstan.
Algeria will travel to Kazakhstan for the opening leg of pool N which also has Cuba, Australia and the host while Kenya who won two matches against Mexico and Algeria in the last edition will depart Nairobi on June 23 for the group O matches slated for Mexico. The newly crowned Africa champions has relatively easy matches in the first round having paired Mexico, Colombia and Peru and head coach David Lung’aho want to better his last performance where he won two and lost two matches. The two wins were Kenya’s first outside Africa.
David Lunga’ho steered Kenya to her third straight Africa Nations title and a ninth in total in their 10 final appearances since 1991 following a 3-0 (25-17, 25-21, 25-20) win over Algeria in the final.
From Mexico the Africans Queens will proceed to Algeria for the second leg where they must win at least two of their matches to move to the third round set for Australia and Algeria may take that advantage to avenge their continental loss to the nine time Africa champions.
While other coaches dream of such opportunities, the two coaches, David Lung’aho of Kenya and Francois Savalgni of Algeria share a common problem, of coming up with strong squads to challenge for medals in their many tournaments lined up this years.
After the Grand Prix, the top two Africa women’s Volleyball playing nations will turn their attentions to the All Africa Games and the world Cup and raising squad worth challenging for medals in the coveted Volleyball competitions is something that is giving the two tacticians sleepless nights even as they spend days globetrotting.
“We will have to split this team into two, one for the world Cup and another to take part in the All Africa Games,” Kenyan coach, Lung’aho said who has set a target of four out of six wins in the first two legs of the grand Prix.
We will have all summer preparing for the world Cup and the good thing is that examination period is over (in Algeria) we will have all our players who were busy writing their examinations, Italian Savalgni, Algerian head coach said after the finals.
“We have so many players in Algeria and we will have to come up with a second string side to send to the world Cup and that is a very good thing for Volleyball in Algeria,” he added.
Elvince Joshua
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