Moorosi Tsiane

LOCAL volleyball champions, Redskins, will return home with tails between their legs after losing all their five group stage games of the Men’s African Volleyball Championships at Abdulla Al Fasal Halls in Cairo, Egypt.

Three became the tedious number as the side suffered five 3-0 losses in their Group A.

The reigning local champions opened their campaign with a loss to Prisons (Kenya) on Tuesday before another they played Nemo Stars (Uganda) on Wednesday.

They then played Espoir (Democratic Republic of Congo) before they fell to defending and record 12-time champions, Al Ahly (Egypt) and lastly to AS Police (Ivory Coast) yesterday morning.

Redskins coach, Tšepo Raletooane, told the Sunday Express from Cairo that they gave their all in the competition.

“We gave it our all but unfortunately we lost,” Raletooane said.

“We will come back home with this experience and use it to build Redskins to be the better side going forward.

“The level of competition is very high here and we were in one of the toughest groups with the heavyweights. All the teams in our group have played in this tournament at least five times consecutively each so you can just imagine the huge gap between them and us.”

Raletooane said their poor performance also reflects on their shaky preparations going into this competition.

“We tried to prepare under those tough circumstances and unfortunately our performance here reflects how we prepared. Clearly, we did not prepare enough compared to our opponents,” said Raletooane.

He said they would now wait for play offs on Monday for a chance to at least improve their rankings.

“In groups we are out and now the focus is on the play offs so that we can try to improve our rankings,” Raletooane said.