Badminton coach unhappy with preparations ahead of Africa Championship

Jacob Evans Wilson, head coach of the Ghana Badminton national team, is not impressed with the level of preparation of his team, as they prepare for the All Africa Senior Championships, from April 20 to 29, at the Alfred Diete Spiff Civic Centre, Port Harcourt in Rivers State, Nigeria.

The Port Harcourt championship, with 17 participating countries, would serve as the continental qualification for the All African Games, to be held in August this year in Morocco and the 2020 Olympics Games in Tokyo, Japan.

Coach Wilson in an interview with the GNA Sports at the team’s training camp at the DG Hathramani Sports Hall at the Accra Sports Stadium before leaving Ghana said, they had challenges with the facility as they have to share with other sporting disciplines.

He said, it was worrisome for a team that had an important international assignment to be rotating the facility with other sporting disciplines, adding that they no option than to agree to that arrangement since it was the only facility available.

According to Wilson, the situation compelled them to reduce the number of hours of training each day.

“As of now we have about three other disciplines namely; boxing, table tennis, taekwondo, train here, making training very difficult. Everybody is trying to use the hall, which is the only facility available,” he noted.

The experienced coach noted that, regardless of the challenges they were facing in their preparations, the athletes were still determined and focused on the task ahead and were ready to deliver their best.

The team, flew out of the country for the championship, which is made up of two separate tournaments:

The Mixed Team Event holding from April 22 to 25 and the Individual Championship to hold from April 26 to 28.

Team Ghana would be competing against the best teams from the continent for the showpiece event including; Algeria, Benin, Botswana, Congo, Congo DRC, Eritrea, Egypt, and the continent’s number one ranked team Mauritius. Other participating countries are; Kenya, Ivory Coast, Seychelles, South Africa, Togo, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe and the host country, Nigeria.