A ten-woman Gambia female national side suffered a narrow 2-1 defeat to the female national team of Burkina Faso last Saturday in Ouagadougou in the first leg of their 2018 African Women Cup of Nations (AWCON) qualifiers.
The Female Scorpions, who had Amie Jarju sent for a second bookable offence, fought hard to secure a result ahead of their return-leg tie in Banjul tomorrow, Tuesday, 10 April 2018, but were unfortunately undone by Amie’s dismissal half way through the game, even though they were first to score in the epic game at the Stade du 4 Août through star player Adama Tamba, who is the current leading scorer in The Gambia’s female senior league with 25 goals to her name.
However the host found an equaliser just before the break to bring the game level. But despite the disappointment of loosing their the lead, the Gambian girls fought hard to keep the host at bay and where successful up till the sending off of Miss Jarju. With a player advantage, the Burkinabe girls didn’t take long to extend their lead with a second goal to take a 2-1 aggregate lead into the second leg.
And now the Female Scorpions will have to do it all on home soil to get any chance of a place in the AWCON tournament, which is scheduled to take place in Ghana later this year between the 17 November to 1 December 2018. The team, who are bizarrely scheduled to arrive home in Banjul this morning Monday 9th April, even though their return game is tomorrow afternoon, have never played in the CAF Women’s competition, although they had in the past qualified for the FIFA Women’s U-17 World Cup in Azerbaijan 2012 where they failed to go past the group stage.
However, The Gambian team’s head coach and former player Mariama Sowe is somehow quite optimistic her team can rewrite that history by ensuring they go through to the competition in Ghana, which is expected to future eight teams from around the continent including hosts Ghana, and will also serve as the African qualifiers for the FIFA Women’s World Cup, with the top three teams qualifying for France 2019.
“I’m honored to be part of the Gambia’s first senior women’s national team to participate in the Africa Cup of Nations qualifiers,” Said Madam Sowe on the Gambia Football Federation’s Website.
“The team is well prepared and for sure we will make it because we’ve been training for over six months and playing both local and international friendly matches”.
However, the team, who also had a brief training camp in Morocco ahead of the game in Ouagadougou, where they played a friendly match against their Moroccan Female counterparts, last Monday, 2 April 2018, which ended with a 2-1 to loss, with Adama Tamba scoring for the Gambian girls, face a difficult task with many fearing fatigue due to their strange travel arrangements, which the GFF, through their President Lamin Kabba Bajo expressed their own concerns and described the circumstances surrounding the tight schedule as something beyond their control. See full statement released on the federation’s Website below:
“The PRESIDENT of the Gambia Football Federation LAMIN KABBA BAJO has said the GFF is aware of the tight Qualifier schedules for both CAF and FIFA matches and that the GFF is concerned about it.
The GFF wishes to appreciate the concern of football fans about the very inconvenience travel itinerary of the Senior Women’s National Team on their way to and from Burkina Faso. However, we wish inform all that the CAF window for the 1st Round (1st and 2nd Legs) is between 2nd and 10th April 2018. Burkina Faso as host of the first leg chose Friday the 7th and we had no choice but to choose the 10th which is the last day of the window.
Regarding the travel itinerary, the current one was the best available at the time of booking. It should be understood that neither the GFF nor The Gambia is in control of the international flight schedules, especially when our own airline is not flying.
The General public is being assured that the GFF is as well very concerned and disturbed by this situation but unfortunately it cannot do anything about it.
Finally, we wish to remind all that such tight schedules affect the male competitions as well as the female competitions in both FIFA and CAF. Thus it’s not in anyway a discrimination against our sisters.
Finally, the GFF solicit the understanding of the situation by all and also solicit the prayers of all for a better result on Tuesday.”
The Gambian team plays tomorrow, Tuesday 10th April, in the return leg against the Burkina girls at the Independence Stadium in Bakau, with the kick-off scheduled for 4:30pm.
