Kickoff (Cape Town)
24 November 2008
Banyana Banyana will be hoping to emulate their male counterparts in Equatorial Guinea tomorrow when they take on Cameroon's senior women's team in the African Women's Championships.
Bafana Bafana beat the Indomitable Lions 3-2 in the Nelson Mandela Challenge last week and the South African girls, as winners of Group B, are set to meet Group A runners' up Cameroon in the Malabo Stadium.
Cameroon have finished second in the tournament twice in the past, in 1991 and 2004.
Defending champions and winners of all five previous editions of the competition, Nigeria's Super Falcons will meet hosts Equatorial Guinea in the other semi.
Nigeria has already asked the Confederation of African Football (CAF) to conduct a gender check on at least two players of the host's squad.
NFF vice-president, Amanze Uchegbulam said on Sunday that a similar protest by the Cameroon delegation ahead of the tournament's opening match was ignored by CAF.
"We know that the organisers may not take action but we feel strongly about this. There are two players in the Equatorial Guinea team whose gender is doubtful and CAF will do this competition a lot of good if this issue is cleared.
"It is a competition where all the teams should have level-playing field, most especially on gender matter."
Another official, Tunde Aderibigbe said the players involved are those registered with the number 5 and 8 shirts; Binguisa Simpore and Salimata Simpore, respectively. These players, he said, were originally from Burkina Faso.
"These two players are not women and this is women's tournament", insisted Aderibigbe, the special assistant to the NFF President.
Be the first to Write a Comment!
Copyright © 2008 Kickoff. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
