…several youngsters promoted to senior team
Staff Reporter
Windhoek – Eleven years into its existence, the revered Ramblers Football Academy has stepped up its game for the first time in the club’s history by promoting the majority of its homegrown footballers to their first team.
Going by the slogan of ‘own is best’, a total of 17 young footballers who joined the academy as early as from the under 7 age level have come through the ranks to under 17 level.
The youngsters have been duly rewarded with promotion to the first team that will be competing in the Southern Stream First Division Inland stream against the likes of Nampol, Rebels, Eleven Champions, Windhoek United (Windhoek) Try Again (Keetmanshoop) Hardap Prison (Mariental), Spoilers (Okahandja) and coastal outfits Western Spurs, SFC, Blue Boys and Flamingoes to complete the lineup.
Founded in 1945, Ramblers Football Club have primarily concentrated on building its football academy in the hope of becoming one of the biggest in the country over the last 11-years and the investment is finally paying handsome dividends now.
Apart from regularly winning national competitions from under 7 to under 17 levels, several players who came through the youth ranks at Ramblers managed to make it to the national set up in recent years.
Half a dozen of players that were in the Brave Warriors squad in a recent friendly against Botswana had links to the Tunschell Street Boys.
Ramblers Football Academy, made up the core of the Black Africa Hopsol team that participated in an international competition in South Africa earlier this year while an under 14 team participated at the Gothia Cup in Sweden last year.
A significant number of footballers were also called up to the various national youth teams over the past 11 years.
“It is indeed a proud moment for Ramblers to see the majority of our first division team being made up of youngsters who came through the ranks,” bragged Ramblers chairman Cedric van Turah.
Before the 2014 season, Ramblers FC decided to swap its premier league status with the University of Namibia (UNAM). The decision was prompted by the naked reality that it became financially enviable to keep the team afloat in the top echelons of the country’s flagship football league.
And while received a monthly grant of N$45, 000 from the league’s principal sponsor MTC, it was costing more than double that amount to just meet players’ allowance while there were additional costs such as maintenance of the stadium including excessive traveling expenses.
Having first set out to produce top talent, Van Turah, is adamant the ultimate mission is to take the team back into the Premiership. Promoted youths this year and their coach Bennie Haoseb (who also coaches youth teams in the Academy) are to form the core of the team.
With the strong academy as it’s feeder and once the club’s finances permit, RFC will rejoin the elites and challenge for premier league honours as was the case in the past. Furthermore, players will be able to move on to the rest of the world at regular intervals.
In the meantime, Ramblers is ready to unleash its young talent in the SSFD whilst competing fiercely the lucrative knockout cup competitions.
For more information contact Cedric van Turah @0811406000 or alternatively sedrick@mobipay.com.na. Ralf Behrens can also be reached @081 122 2347