Lionesses’ Oloo eyeing Tokyo ticket, African title in Tunisia

Kenya Lionesses head coach Felix Oloo is confident of defending the Africa Women’s sevens trophy, come the 12th and 13th of October in Jemmel, Tunisia.

Lionesses are in Pool A with Ghana, Botswana and Senegal in this year’s tournament, which will also serve as the African qualifying round for the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo, Japan.

“We’re going for the main ticket and the cup. I’m confident the team will win,” said Oloo.

Lionesses will be seeking a return to the Olympics after replacing South Africa as Africa’s representatives to the 2016 games in Rio following the Lady Blitzboke’s withdrawal, and Oloo is even more upbeat.

“You see we’ve beaten the South Africans twice in our last three meetings, winning against them in the Commonwealth Games and earlier this year in the group stages of the invitational Hong Kong sevens. Although we lost to them in the semi-finals, we know what to expect from them,” he explained.

He further offered: “We know they will bring in sprinters and that’s not a big problem for us. With that approach we’re going to deny them chances of attacking.”

His sentiments come barely a week after Lionesses skipper Philadelphia Orlando pledged to lead her teammates overcome the 2020 Olympics qualifying hurdle.

“In the last qualifiers we finished second behind South Africa. This year we want a direct ticket and our target is South Africa. We’ve played them a couple of times since 2015 and this time round we’ll give everything. We must qualify,” pressed Orlando.

The team jets out from the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport to Tunis, Tunisia at 10:00pm on Tuesday.