Ahead of this evening’s key qualifier against Nigeria, Banyana Banyana captain Refiloe Jane is happy to be back with the team, and says they are fully focussed on qualifying for the Olympic Games.
Banyana take on Nigeria at 6 pm South African time in the first leg of their final Olympic qualifier at the MKO Abiola Stadium.
Jane has been absent since last year’s World Cup, and is glad to have her injury troubles behind her.
She says the team is fully focussed on the task at hand, and while they know the Super Falcons won’t be easy, she is confident in her team’s abilities.
“It feels good to be back with the team, it’s been a long journey of recovery,” Jane told SAFA media
“But all that is behind me now. I’m more focused on gelling back again with the team and making sure that the experience that I gained over the years, I’m able to share it with the other players.
“And now we’ve got a mandate to qualify for the Olympics in Paris later this year. So I think that’s what we focusing on. That’s what we working on as a team, we know the qualities that we have amongst ourselves. So we will try to put that together and making sure that we succeed.
“Even though we’ve played Nigeria a couple of times, and recently we’ve won against them, we still need to give them the respect that they deserve. They’re still the undisputed African champs in theory, looking at how many times they’ve ruled Africa. So we cannot take that for granted, or take it away from them, we still respect them.
“But also we look at the quality that we have in our team, we look at the strides that we’ve made in the team. You look at the past results. Not so long ago, we’ve beaten them twice, we’ve played a couple of draws against them. So we’ve seen that, with the journey that we’ve been on. It’s an upward trajectory. So we are very happy with our performances.
“We know also, they’ve been doing well in the previous games that they played, they did well also in the World Cup. So it’s going to be a totally different ballgame. This is like the final of the finals. So we will try and make sure that we get a good result again, and make sure that we go to represent Africa in the Olympics.”