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Speaker of parliament Rt Hon Anitah Annet Among, former speaker Edward Ssekandi, FUFA president Moses Magogo and other officials, handed the Crested Cranes the CECAFA ttitle after winning the 2022
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By Our Reporter
Crested Cranes head coach Sheryl Botes Ulanda will have to quickly revise her preparations to get the team ready for the Council for East and Central Africa Football Associations (CECAFA) Women’s Challenge Cup, set to take place in Dar es Salaam from June 12 to 22.
This follows confirmation by the local football governing body, FUFA, on Thursday that Uganda will participate in the tournament, which was last held in 2022 in Njeru, Uganda.
After a three-year hiatus, CECAFA has now finalized plans for the championship, which has so far attracted only five of the expected ten participating nations.
The late communication means Coach Botes will have just three days to prepare her team before travelling to Tanzania for the competition.
Sources at FUFA headquarters in Mengo told this website that by Friday morning, Botes had not yet named the final squad. However, FUFA is fully supporting the team’s expedited preparations, including organizing a brief two-day training camp before departure.
If the squad is named on Friday as expected, the players will enter camp and train over the weekend — Saturday, Sunday, and Monday — before leaving for Tanzania, where they are scheduled to play their opening fixture against Burundi on Thursday, June 12.
Coach Botes conducts a training session on Sunday
Uganda, the defending champions of the last CECAFA edition in 2022, where they beat Burundi 3–1 in the final, will face a challenging task. Their main opponents — including Kenya and hosts Tanzania — have been in training camps for weeks and have played multiple friendly matches to fine-tune their squads.
Botes conducts a morning class with the Teen Cranes
According to the released fixture, the tournament will open on Thursday, June 12, with Uganda playing Burundi, followed by South Sudan facing hosts Tanzania. All matches will be held at the Azam Complex in Dar es Salaam.
Uganda’s next fixtures include South Sudan on June 14, Kenya on June 17, and Tanzania on June 19 in a round-robin format. The top teams will advance to the final, scheduled for June 22.
Meanwhile, CECAFA members Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti, Somalia, Rwanda, and Zanzibar have opted out of the ten-day competition.
Torch Media Africa
