Yours truly would like to make use of this opportunity to give the Namibian ladies hockey side a gentle pat on the back for their courageous performance that propelled the team to the World Cup finals at the expense of elder sister, South Africa.
It’s a well documented secret that Namibian hockey’s progress has been continuously hampered by a significant number of hiccups such as the absence of an Astroturf pitch on home soil and more importantly, lack of decent competition in recent years.
The team has always done well under trying circumstances and was regular customers at the quadrennial All Africa Multi-Sports Games but would always find itself wanting when it mattered the most.
A quick glimpse at the overall composition of our national ladies hockey team reveals that development and transformation is certainly traveling in tandem in this particular sporting discipline.
Qualifying for the World Cup at the expense of mega-rich South Africa with limited resources for that matter is no mean feat, considering our skeleton sports budget coupled with a continuous lack of competition against formidable opponents.
That said, the real work starts now with preparations for the bigger stage because the days when we hailed mere qualification as the ultimate goal are long gone.
Those at the helm of the Namibian Hockey Union must roll up their sleeves and make sure the team is well prepared, and kept in good shape by playing warm up matches against decent opponents in the build up to the World Cup.
It’s incumbent upon our National Sports Commission (NSC), as the country’s presiding sports body, to ensure that it takes care of teams representing the Land of the Brave at august gatherings well, and provides them with sufficient resources as well as the necessary technical support to represent their motherland with absolute pride and honour.
Despite all the odds stacked against her, Namibia certainly has the talent and will power and must make a serious statement when competing at international level.
Frank Fredericks has done it before while Harry Simon, Paulus Ambunda, Julius Indongo, Hitman Moses, Andre Stoop, Jacques Burger, Collin Benjamin, Johanna Benson and many others have also played a hand in putting Namibia on the global map with great aplomb.
External forces capture domestic football
It’s a great shame that personal vendettas appear to be the main stumbling block in the long, drawn out delay to the Namibia premiership (NPL) kick off.
Seriously, some influential blokes, or rather external forces, have captured domestic football and are deliberately holding our football hostage, so to speak.
Dear readers, yours truly is damn sure many of you would scorn to own me in a lie if I dare conclude that the delay in signing the sponsorship deal is a systematic plot to undermine, discredit as well as embarrass our Head of State.
Or else, how does any sober minded person explain MTC’s dilly-dallying tactics in getting the Memorandum of Agreement (MoA) signed to put the sponsorship into effect.
Firstly, MTC unfairly dictated to the NPL management to first go and find an additional 9-million dollar before funds could be released.
Secondly, MTC did not see its way to enter into a contract with the NPL Interim Committee and sought clarity from the mother body (NFA) in this regard. When the NFA clarified the issue by appointing an Ad hoc Committee, MTC made a sudden U-turn saying it would only deal with a legally constituted committee duly appointed by the NPL Board of Governors (BoG).
What puzzles the mind, is that MTC still strictly controls the purse strings of the allocated sponsorship since the money is not deposited directly into NPL coffers. So, what’s the all the fuss and delay about?, Just sign the contract and let the games begin. I rest my case.