Sports to resume normal practice and competitions |12 February 2022

Team sport can resume normal practice and competitions

All sports, including team sports, may resume normal practice and competitions, the Ministry of Health has said in a communiqué released yesterday.

The communiqué adds that all those taking part in sports activities must follow the venue and federations/ associations standard operating procedures (SOP).

The Ministry of Health had earlier this month agreed to relax the rules to allow the Seychelles Football Federation to restart some of its activities like running training for both the women’s and men’s national teams.

The women’s team comprising 22 players leave the country today for the Maldives where they will play three friendly matches. They will face off against the Maldives women’s national team on February 15 and 18, and then against Saudi Arabia women’s national team on February 20.

All matches will be played at the National Football Stadium and will kick off at 9pm (10pm Seychelles time).

As for the men’s team they are preparing for the match-up with Lesotho in the preliminary stages to progress to the main groupings draw of the 34th TotalEnergies Africa Cup of Nations 2023 in Ivory Coast.

The preliminary round games of two-leg ties will be played between March 21 and March 29, 2022. The six winners on aggregate scores of the preliminary games will join 42 other countries in a draw that will produce 12 groups with the winners and runners-up qualifying for the next Afcon tournament in Ivory Coast in 2023. The other five pairing are as follows: Gambia will play Chad, Sao Tome will face Mauritius, Djibouti will meet South Sudan, Somalia will face Eswatini and Eritrea will clash with Botswana.

Sports in Seychelles had been on a standstill since the outbreak of the Civd-19 pandemic in early 2020.

Teams sports like volleyball, basketball, football organised competitions on a smaller scale in 2021, but had to cut their season short after there was a spike in the number of Covid-19 cases. As for individual sports karting and darts, they were able to run different competitions albeit without spectators.

It is hoped that local sportsmen and women will use the coming weeks to get in shape so as to bring the spectacle back in the venues for the fans who have been longing for it.

Gerard Govinden