Metro hits volleyball woes

The Buffalo City Metro women’s volleyball team opened their Steve Vukile Tshwete Games campaign with a loss when they were beaten 2-0 by Alfred Nzo District Municipality at Gompo Community Hall in East London on Thursday.

BCM team manager Siphokazi Hali attributed their loss to many things, but singled out “the most we had problems with was taking the opposition team to task, hence we could not score goals”.

She said the entire team gave it their best shot during their first game although they have their own weak points, such as laziness.

“They don’t want to run after the ball, but they know that they have to find the ball and not the other way round.

“Also, if they could have had proper training before wecame here, we would have been able to produce brilliant results. However they didn’t get the opportunity to get to know each other.

“We couldn't secure the halls in the community around East London, because even the [Samwu] strike has had an impact on that because there was no one to give us a hall.

“On top of that, these children were also unfit, so we had to try and fine-tune them.”

She added: “Most of our players are Afrikaans speakers from Parkside and others speak Xhosa, so they struggle to communicate well with each other.

“But that can be addressed when we get the necessary resources,” said Hali.

Sarah Baartman District Municipality’s volleyball men’s side also suffered a hard loss when they were beaten 2-0 by Nelson Mandela Bay Metro at the same venue.

Sarah Baartman coach Calvin Cona said his boys did fairly well, but it was unfortunate they lost.

“What’s important is that I could see they were enjoying themselves. We still have one game in hand.

“We are looking forward to playing that game as we see it as an opportunity to collect the points we dropped in the first game,” said Cona.

He said his players were nervous when they began their SVT Games campaign.

“Hence we are looking to bounce back from our loss with our upcoming game.

“Most of my players were not used to the environment in East London, but at least now we have spent a bit of time here and they know what to do.

“And I’m happy with the process during the games because in sports there’s unity. Sport overcomes everything that is negative.

“You won’t hear of incidents of racism at the SVT Games. We are all speaking in one voice.”

Cona also hailed the SVT Games and said they build children’s characters, and self-esteem.

“For instance, we are coming from Graaff-Reinet. Our kids are getting the exposure they need to make it in life.

“But with the tournament we need to go back to the drawing board and nurture more talent that would be able to come and compete in the games in 2019.”