Yesterday evening South Africa’s Banyana Banyana lost 2-1 to Equatorial Guinea’s Women in Malabo, in a set-back to their long and daunting road to qualification for the 2008 Women’s Olympic Football in Beijing.
“We beat them 2-0 in the CAF Championships,” Banyana Team Manager Fran Hilton-Smith told gsport a few days before the team departed, “But I think they were having a bad day. On the day we were a better team, but we’re not taking that lightly at all.
“They’re a very good team, very physical, very strong, and we’re not going there with any casual attitude. We’re going there full-on, fired up to win,” Hilton-Smith said.
In last night’s away match, Banyana came up against that strong team, and despite the lone goal of Veronica Phewa adding to her international tally, the South African ladies will have to wait for the return leg for an opportunity to progress to the next stage of Olympic qualification.
“The usual rough, difficult (circumstances),” said Hilton-Smith ruefully after last night’s match. “But I think we can take them at home.
“Both the goals against us were stupid,” continued Hilton-Smith. “The first one was a penalty, and the second one was a bit of a mistake by one of our defenders. They weren’t clear-cut goals. I think at home it will be a different story.”
The return leg of the home-and-away knock-out against Equatorial Guinea will take place in Pretoria Sunday 11 March, the city in which the home girls have their base camp, and in which recent fond winning ways have delighted a firm supporter group.
Matches in qualification for the Olympics will carry on though two more phases ending March 2008. The team that wins the final match automatically qualifies for the Olympics, whereas the losing team will have to play off against Brazil for qualification, a daunting task.
Argentina became the first country outside of host China to qualify for the 2008 Women’s Olympic Football, when they beat arch-rivals Brazil 2-0 in November 2006, to win the South American Women’s Championships.
The national women’s team played their previous two internationals on a home-and-away basis against Angola in their All Africa Games quest.
After going down 4-3 in the first away leg in Luanda in a match where officials were criticised for bias, the South African ladies team beat Angola 4-0 in Pretoria to prepare for the Olympic challenge in good spirit.
In the last match, Banyana’s scorers took two goals in the first half, and two in the second to sweep away Angola’s hopes of forcing an upset against Banyana.
“Good crowds, and good turnout, very supportive, good pitch, everything was perfect,” Fran Hilton-Smith commented at the time. “And of course, the captain Portia Modise, scored the first two goals, so the crowd went crazy.
“Probably the most spectacular goal of the game was the fourth one by Nompumelelo Nyandeni, who took a shot between the half-way line and the 18-yard box, a cracker of the shot, and it just dipped in under the bar. It was a really special, special goal.”
Banyana Banyana return home from Equatorial Guinea at 11:30am on Tuesday morning, and knowing coach Augustine Makalakalane and his coaching team, they will most likely head straight for camp in Pretoria’s High Performance Centre, in preparation for 11 March, when they face the Guineans for a final attempt at the 2008 Olympics.
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