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Ricky Zililo, Senior Sports Reporter
ZIMBABWE senior national men’s rugby team, has to work hard to ready themselves for next years’ World Cup qualifiers after losing 41-10 to Namibia in the final of World Rugby’s Quadrangular Series in Stellenbosch, South Africa.

The defeat saw the Sables sliding one place down the ladder on the world rankings to 33rd. Zimbabwe had gone into the tournament ranked 34th and moved two places up after beating Brazil 24-22 in the semi-final of the Quadrangular Series.

The Sables were using the Quadrangular Series to prepare for next year’s Rugby Africa Cup in France, which serves as Africa’s final qualifier for the 2023 Rugby World Cup.

Winners of the Rugby Africa Cup will secure automatic qualification for the 2023 Rugby World Cup to be held in France, while runners-up also have a chance to qualify via the repechage.

A disappointed Sables captain Hilton Mudariki was, however, happy with the lessons they learnt from the tour.

“Obviously, we’re hugely disappointed with the result against Namibia at the weekend. We went into the game wanting to come out with victory. I think we had a great week of training and we prepared very well.

Throughout the week, we spoke about how the defence is going to win us the game. I thought we were awesome in that area in the first-half. Namibia had lots of possession in the first-half and we had to defend a lot.

“A few decision-making errors let us down and errors at set-piece cost us in the second-half. Those are some of the lessons we learnt ahead of next year’s World Cup Qualifiers.

We know the areas we need to work on. We know we can potentially meet Namibia in the semi-finals. There’s a lot of work between now and then,” said Mudariki.

His coach Brendan Dawson said they have to work on their depth in the coming months.

“We brought in a lot of new players that had never been part of the national team and got some more guys opportunities to be noticed for the World Cup Qualifiers. We got to work on our depth, which we have seven months to work on.

Getting more game time is important. Know what our players need to work on and be prepared for the World Cup Qualifiers,” Dawson said. — @ZililoR