The Madibaz women’s football team will be aiming to use a mixture of youth and experience to make an impact when the University Sport South Africa tournament takes place next week.<\/p>\n
Starting on Monday, a total of 64 student teams from universities around the country will be in Port Elizabeth for this annual varsity football extravaganza hosted by Nelson Mandela University.<\/p>\n
The tournament will come to a conclusion when the final matches are played on July 6.<\/p>\n
Coach Nomaxabiso Manto said after taking a virtually new team to last year’s tournament – only one player had previous USSA experience – they had finished 13th.<\/p>\n
This time, she said, they had managed to maintain a strong thread of continuity, with experience and youth combining to possibly improve their position in the final standings.<\/p>\n
“We are determined to finish in the top eight which will help us to secure a place in the Varsity Football competition,” she said.<\/p>\n
“The USSA tournament plays a major role in our programme each year because it gives us a chance to showcase our talent against the best varsity teams in the country.”<\/p>\n
Manto said they were excited about playing in Port Elizabeth and aimed to reap the rewards of their extensive preparation programme.<\/p>\n
“The players have been training very hard and everyone has been putting in an extra effort for this tournament, especially as we will have home support.”<\/p>\n
She added that doing well in the USSA tournament, as well as the Nelson Mandela Bay regional league, were their priorities for this year.<\/p>\n
Their mental preparation for the tournament would be the key to their chances of success, said Manto.<\/p>\n
“We need to make sure we have the right attitude going into the week and that we stay positive at all times.<\/p>\n
“We have the quality that is required to do well but we just need to make sure we believe in ourselves.”<\/p>\n
Recognising that a concerted team effort would be essential for them to excel, Manto added that they had a number of exciting players in their line-up.<\/p>\n
“To mention a few, players such as Ayabulela Ndyebi and Ababalwe Madasithe, who are rookies in the team, are confident and skilful. It will be interesting to see what impact they make.”<\/p>\n
Assessing their opposition, she felt Tshwane University of Technology and University of Western Cape would be the leading contenders for the title.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Madibaz women’s football team will be aiming to use a mixture of youth and experience to make an impact when the University Sport South Africa tournament takes place next week. Starting on Monday, a total of 64 student teams from universities around the country will be in Port Elizabeth for this annual varsity football […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":58746,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[3608,2800,3583],"class_list":["post-19819","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-madibaz-womens-football","tag-nelson-mandela-university","tag-ussa-football-tournament"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19819","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19819"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19819\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}