The national rugby team (Silverbacks) head coach, Claude Aime Ezour, has appealed to the local rugby governing body to push for early start of the 2019 season in order to allow his side enough time to prepare for Africa Silver Cup tournament. Ezour argues that under a busy league calendar, the national team fails to get sufficient time prepare for continental competitions, which results into poor performance. The Silverbacks got promoted to Africa Silver Cup from Bronze Cup last week, and for Ezour, the proposal is to have the league start early January so that the national team can be allocated adequate time to prepare for tough opponents such as; Ivory Coast, Mauritius, and Ghana. “Given the lessons learned this year, if the league kicks-off early January, it will give us ample time to prepare for the mid-year competition. This time round, we will have tougher opponents to face and we should prepare accordingly,” said Ezour. He further lamented that Silverbacks were put straight into Bronze Cup matches in Ghana this year on the back of very little preparation time. The coach’s appeal is also backed by the players who think that it was the reason why they underperformed during the Africa Bronze Cup. Kigali Sharks captain, Barnabas Ngizwenayo, who is also a regular in the national team says, “Inadequate preparations made it impossible to perform to our best this year, it should not happen again in 2019.” editorial@newtimes.co.rw
