WAFCON: South Africa ‘will dust ourselves off and move on’ – Ellis

South Africa women’s national team head coach Desiree Ellis has remained positive despite the team coming out of the CAF Women’s Africa Cup of Nations (WAFCON) in Morocco without a medal.

Banyana Banyana, who were defending the crown, went down 4-3 on penalties against Ghana after both sides had tied 1-1 at the end of regulation time. Ghana finished third to claim a bronze medal, while Banyana returned home with a fourth-place finish.

“We dust ourselves off and move on. We can’t look back too much, yes it wasn’t a great campaign, but we got into the semifinals and came very close to getting to the final, so we’ll just move on. Like every team that comes to a tournament, we had ambitions of winning it, but we didn’t get there. Unfortunately, we didn’t do well,” said Dr Ellis as quoted by SAFA media.

“I think some of the games took a lot out of us, but we always knew either getting to the final or getting to the third and 4th place playoff we still had another game. We had five substitutes really because we’ve also picked up some injuries along the way, but that’s not an excuse.

“We just have to pick ourselves up, these things happen in football – you’ve got to give credit to the opponents, in most situations they were better than us and I not going to sugar-coat that, you’ve got to give credit where it’s due.”