The average age of the current senior national football team is 21 years and newly appointed Amavubi Coach Johnny McKinstry is not hiding his excitement at the realisation that this aspect could go far into making his work cut out ahead of a defining year for Rwandan football.

Ideally, McKinstry should prepare three different squads for the 2016 African Nations Championship (Chan), a competition open to only locally based players that feature in the domestic league, the U-23 side for the Rio 2016 Olympic Games qualifiers next month and another squad for both the 2017 Africa Cup of Nations qualifiers in June and the 2018 Fifa World Cup qualifiers in October.

However, the Irishman is fortunate enough that he could actually summon the same squad for all the above mentioned tournaments, a feat that will help the players grasp his tactics in a short period of time and present enough opportunities through friendly games to test their level of improvement.

"This is very excellent because we get to spend twice as much time together. You cannot dismiss spending time with the players because it is like being a teacher. The training sessions are the classes and the games are the tests. The more time you spend training, the more time we get to spend with the players and better chances for success. Having the same squad for the Amavubi, Chan and U-23 is a big development,” explained the pleased McKinstry.

In the current Amavubi setup, only captain Haruna Niyonzima plies his trade outside Rwanda, featuring for table leaders Yanga in the Vodacom Premier League in Tanzania making him unavailable for Chan next year for now, but he is available for selection for the U-23 side which is allowed to feature three overage players as well as the qualifiers for the 2017 Afcon and 2018 World Cup.

editorial@newtimes.co.rw