Bafana Bafana of South Africa have been dealt another injury scare ahead of their clash with Nigeria, as the team’s coach, Stuart Baxter says Thulani Serero had reported to camp with an ankle ailment.
Serero was only recently invited back to the team by Baxter, for the first time since snubbing a call-up in November last year, but the 28-year-old flew from his base at Arnhem, Holland with a knock, which he suffered in Vitesse’s 2-1 victory over Utrecht on Sunday.
Another injury scare upon reporting for duty was goalkeeper Ronwen Williams, but Baxter is confident both players will recover early, in order to be of value and decided against calling up any replacements.
Bafana take on Nigeria in their penultimate 2019 Africa Cup of Nations qualifier at FNB Stadium on Saturday before hosting Paraguay in the Nelson Mandela Challenge in Durban on Tuesday.
Baxter was buoyed by the fact that he had a full complement of players at his disposal after all of them arrived in camp by Monday morning.
Preparations continued Tuesday morning at Steyn City School from 10 to 11:20am before they returned for an afternoon session from 3 to 4:20pm.
Baxter revealed: “We had two scares – one was Ronwen Williams. We got a call from [Dr] Jon Patricios at the Sports Clinic saying that he had a slight knee strain and they would be examining him.
“The ultrasound didn’t find any tears, but it could take him around 24-48 hours for it to settle. So he won’t be training with us for 48 hours, and we do hope it will settle.
“We’re not going to call in another third keeper; we’re going to keep Ronwen because we think he’s going to be okay.
“The second one was Thulani Serero – we didn’t receive anything from the club or Thulani, but through media in Holland they said he had an ankle injury.
“We knew he was on the plane but we didn’t know anything about his injury, so we held our breath a little bit.
“When he got off he said no, he had a little laceration and got five stitches on the gash, and the sutures should come out. He should be able to join full training.
“We did afterwards get a doctor’s report from Holland. So, those two should be okay within the next 24-48 hours.”
