Kick-off reception and handling pressure will be the key areas Shujaa coach Kevin Wambua will prioritise ahead of this weekend’s Cape Town Sevens in South Africa. Kenya finished 10th overall in the opening leg in Dubai last weekend.
“We need to be clinical, especially in our restarts. We need to know we cannot play without the ball and so this is an area we must prioritise heading into Cape Town,” said Wambua.
“We will also prioritise our kick accuracy to contest and regain the ball and improve on finishing games. I think we start well, but towards the end, we fail to manage ourselves well. We must work on how to absorb pressure.”
Wambua was satisfied with the overall performance in Dubai, considering that most of the players were making their debuts in the series.
“The boys played well and you couldn’t even tell that we were inexperienced with 80 per cent of them new in the squad,” he said.
“Coming close to beating France ( 2 4-19 ), then beating South Africa( 22-17 ) and playing off script against quality side Australia ( 31- 14 ) was credible. They regrouped to beat Ireland ( 21-7 ) and blew off the steam against Uruguay ( 15-7 ).”
Shujaa are in Pool ‘B’ where they face Spain and Australia with the group winners advancing to the semifinals—a departure from the previous tournament, where the top two teams qualified for the quarterfinals.
“There are no easy pools. We have to win both games to advance to the final four,” said Wambua.
Shujaa will be without Christian Ojwang, who injured his ankle in the classification match against Ireland.
He is set for a spell on the sidelines though the injury is not as bad as first thought. “The injury is not as bad as we earlier thought.
He underwent surgery on Monday and he is expected back home on Wednesday,” said Wambua.
The rest of the team arrived in
Cape Town on Monday and are expected to have light training for the
remainder of the week before the
tournament starts on Saturday.
