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Ellina Mhlanga Sports Reporter
AFTER coming second at the Pent Series in Namibia this week, Zimbabwe’s senior netball team are shifting their focus to the African Championships to be hosted by Zambia in August.

The championships are also serving as a qualifier for the 2019 World Cup to take place in England.

Sixteen countries from across the world will compete in the global showpiece.

The top six world ranked teams will automatically qualify for the World Cup and they will be joined by the top two teams who qualify from each of the continental regions.

Coach Lloyd Makunde said their recent participation at the Pent Series in Namibia was their first step towards their build-up to the forthcoming championships.

“Now we know where we need to correct. It actually showed us where we need to work on, so it will be easy for us when we get into camp.

“Since most of the teams we played will be coming for the championships we will work particularly against what we saw. So it’s a great advantage.

“We will try to bring in more players who were not part of the team so that there is competition within the team.

‘’If we bring in like six more players then assess them in camp whoever performs better during camp will be chosen because we have always selected our player on merit,” said Makunde.

Makunde said their area of concern at the moment is the attitude of the players.

“We need to work on the attitude behaviour of our players. The way we played Botswana, they went into the game thinking they had won it already.

‘’Complacency played a part because we beat them last year forgetting that teams are working hard to improve.

“We have informed the national association that we need a longer camp. We saw our mistakes in the games we won and from the defeat.

‘’We need to work extremely hard when we get into camp, it’s now tough. Other countries are preparing and we need to step up,” said Makunde.

The senior side will be hoping to emulate the Under-21s who qualified for the World Youth Cup in 2016.