By Gracious Akujobi Super Falcons are in high spirit for their Saturday’s Africa Women Championship (AWC) qualifier against Rwanda in Gisenyi, a town three hours away from the capital city, Kigali.
Coach Edwin Okon said the team is undaunted by the gimmicks of their host as they are poised to win the first leg before going back to Nigeria to do final job of booking ticket to the AWC in Namibia.
“We refuse to fall prey to all their gimmicks. You must not lose focus and I want you to do your talking on the pitch by beating the She-Amavubi hands down on Saturday” he told the players soon after the three hours journey from Kigali.
The team has no injury worries and they had a feel of the pitch at Gisenyi Thursday afternoon but only went to shake off jet lag by walking round before returning to their hotel.
Team skipper Nwabuoku Evelyn said she is not worried about their host taking the game outside Kigali adding she wants to open her tenure as captain on a winning note and that Rwanda cannot stop her dream of lifting the AWC trophy in Namibia.
The Falcons’ journey took them from Abuja on Wednesday afternoon arriving Kigali on Thursday morning after two stopovers in Addis Ababa and Entebbe, Uganda.
The team landed at 2.25 am local time on Thursday and was received by the Rwandan football authorities.
Falcons were booked into Peace Land Hotel Gisenyi and went to Umuganda stadium to shake off jet lag around 4pm local time which is 3pm Nigerian time. Incidentally, the Umuganda stadium will be the venue of the Saturday qualifier.
Falcons trained by 3pm to 4:30pm local time on Friday which is the official training time allotted to the team.
The match will be played by 3:30pm local time which is 2:30 Nigeria time on Saturday.
