Nigeria's women team to open camp for AWC qualifiers

IANS

Lagos, Jan 3 (IANS) Nigeria’s Super Falcons will resume camping on Jan 13 ahead of the 2014 African Women Championship ( AWC) qualifiers, the country’s football governing body said.

Sanusi Mohammed, the Nigeria Football Association’s Director of Competition, disclosed this in Abuja, saying the Super Falcons will resume camping Jan 13 for the 2014 AWC qualifiers against Sierra Leone with 30 players, Xinhua reported on Thursday.

Nigeria is one of the 25 teams participating in the qualifiers, out of which the top three teams in the 2012 edition have already drawn bye into the second round.

The countries are Equatorial Guinea, South Africa and Cameroon.

Nigeria will face Sierra Leone Feb 14 in the first leg of the preliminary round in Abuja.

They will visit Sierra Leone for the return leg Feb 29.

“We are allowing them to resume this early so that they will have at least one month to prepare for the matches,” said Mohammed, who expressed optimism that the team would have a successful outing.

The 2014 AWC will hold in Namibia from Oct 11 to Oct 25 with eight teams.

The top three teams in the competition will automatically qualify to represent Africa in the 2015 Women World Cup in Canada.