
After two years of playing their football in the Dunoon LFA, Nova Nacional FC have decided in spread their wings. For the 2020 season they’ll either join Rygate LFA, Cape District FA, or Cape Town Tygerberg FA, and are in talks with Ajax to join the High-Performance League in 2021, says Nova Nacional FC chairpersoin Ana Barrote-Rightford
The reason for the club’s decision is to provide stronger competition in order to improve the juniors, said Barrote- Rightford. “Our u12, u14 and u16 players, who are all from Du Noon, as well as the senior 1st team and 2nd team develop very well. Our u18 development team perform well in the 2018/2019 Bayhill Premier Cup as well in the Engen challenge cup,” she said.
“We participated as a guest team in the Rygate LFA u18 division where we got to the knock out final and we lost narrowly on penalties.” She said Nova Nacional was “very grateful” to the Du Noon LFA for accepted the club in 2018, and a good relationship was built with the executive management team, the LFA president Amos Siwayi, and secretary Andere Layitile. But, she said, the Covid-19 pandemic meant Nova Nacional, and other clubs in the second and third division, faced the challenge of not being able to afford to send players and technical management for testing, and Covid-19 equipment being too expensive for the clubs.
“We further believe that participation will decrease due to fear of catching the virus, traveling of players to the fields will be challenging as most players don’t work.” Nova Nacional racked up quite a few accolades in the two years they were with Du Noon LFA. In the 2018/2019 season they qualified for the 2019 Bayhill Cup where they lost in the plate finals on penalties. In the u21 Green Smile tournament, Nova walked away with the championship trophy. In the u23 Kenpark tournament, Nova lost against Bayview FC, while in the regional SAB and Sasol promotional leagues, the men’s and women’s teams ended 9th and 10th on the log. Nova reached the Nedbank cup regional final but lost against Woodlands FC.
“We believe that Nova Nacional FC will carry on in improving the development of players, which has always been the club main objective as their motto is ‘quitting is not an option’.” Barrote-Rightford says she believes Nova has the capability of ending top of the 2019/20 SAB league to gain promotion to the ABC Motsepe League. “Unfortunately the Covid-19 pandemic halted our plans, but we keep our heads high and look forward to competing for promotion next season,” she said.