By GODFREY DUBE –
THE Handball Association of Zambia (HAZ) need K356, 500 to prepare and send the national junior and youth teams for the 2019 World Cup qualifying championships in April.
The tournament meant for the juniors (Under-18 and 16) would be played in Spain while the Youth World Cup youth (Under-20) will be held in Macedonia next year.
HAZ president Victor Banda announced that begging with the 2019 games, the junior competitions will not be played at the same venue and not spreading them as they are.
He added that the International Handball Federation (IHF) had lumped the under-18 and under-16 World Championships to cut of challenges of the game.
“There are changes at World level and the age group games which are Under-20, 18 and now even Under-16. They will be played at the same venue in order to curb on age-cheating as players will be tracked easily like this,” Banda said.
He said Zambia was working hard to make sure it gets teams ready for the two World Cups adding that ZHA has come up with the budget of K 356,500 to prepare and send the teams to the various qualifiers.
“We are just waiting for the host nation to be confirmed but it will either be Zimbabwe or Zambia,” he said.
Banda said the association already has an Under-20 team and that the technical bench was working on coming up with a junior teams.
“We shall have two players from each province from schools and bring the number of players to 20 and then another 15 will be picked from those in the league. So the total number of players to be called for camp will be 35 from which the final teams will be picked,” Banda said.
Banda appealed to the corporate world to come on board and help the association raise the funds to help the teams meet their fixtures and qualify for the tournaments respectively.