National women’s soccer championship kicks off
The first day of the 2021 Sasol League National Championship kicked off to a great start at King Zwelithini Stadium in Durban for the 12th annual tournament.
Day one of the competition produced 19 goals with the bulk coming from Eastern Cape’s City Lads in the last match of the day.
Following the postponement of the 2021 edition of the Sasol League National Championships because of the Omicron variant last year, the highly anticipated tournament began on February 7 and will end on February 13.
Onelisa Nanasele was the star in the 12-3 thriller between Lads and Northern Cape’s Royal Wizards. Nanalese scored a hat-trick in the first half and ended up with four goals, earmarking her for the tournament’s top goalscorer award.
Copperbelt Ladies are on a mission to help Limpopo sides dominate women’s football in the country by becoming the third team in the country’s national league. Karabo Selabe’s side began its campaign with a point after playing to a 1-1 draw against Free State’s Ixias Football Club.
Selabe says they look up to 2019 Sasol League National Champs runners-up Ma-Indies and 2018 Limpopo provincial winners First Touch Academy who now play in the Super League.
“We are happy that we finally played our first game even though we drew. That is not a good result for us, but one point is better than a loss,” he said.
“We are a small team from Sasol, and they (First Touch and Ma-Indies) are national teams. They try to motivate us. We know each other, it’s like we are Kaizer Chiefs and Orlando Pirates. Our chairpersons know one another and they are close. As a young team, we consult with them to learn how things run at the high level,” he said.
In the other match, TS Galaxy’s Rennika Khoza opened the score in a match that the Mpumalanga side was dominating. A lapse of concentration in the last 10 minutes of the game resulted in an equaliser from Elizabeth Gagani of North West team, Tswelelang De’ Scorpion.
The champions and runners-up of the Sasol League National Championship will also gain promotion to the Hollywoodbets Super League. The Sasol League National Championship winning team will walk away with a cool R200 000 for its efforts while runners-up will take home R100 000 and R60 000 for the team finishing third.
