South African women's sides have con­sis­tent­ly threat­ened to qual­i­fy for a Fi­fa fi­nals but have been left hang­ing at the last hur­dle, just un­able to cross the thresh­old to the world stage. Now, though, the Re­pub­lic's un­der-17 women have bro­ken the ice and, at a time of much eu­pho­ria in South Africa fol­low­ing a suc­cess­ful host­ing of the 2010 Fi­fa World Cup, ar­rive in Trinidad and To­ba­go seek­ing to set fur­ther land­marks. Coach Sol­ly Lu­vhen­go and his young­sters had to beat Tunisia in a two-legged play-off to qual­i­fy for the 2010 Fi­fa U-17 Women's World Cup as the third African rep­re­sen­ta­tive. They have been hand­ed a tough draw along­side Asian cham­pi­ons Ko­rea Re­pub­lic, Mex­i­co and Ger­many, who fin­ished third at the in­au­gur­al U-17 world fi­nals in New Zealand two years ago. But there is a qui­et de­ter­mi­na­tion to make a mark and the side–nick­named the Bant­wana–feel they are well pre­pared.

In the build-up to the tour­na­ment in the Caribbean, they spent a week in Eng­land, beat­ing their hosts 4-1 in Birm­ing­ham in their first game and then draw­ing the sec­ond 1-1 two days lat­er. "Al­though Eng­land did not qual­i­fy for the Women's U-17 World Cup, they were good com­pe­ti­tion for us," ex­plained coach Lu­vhen­go. "I made a lot of sub­sti­tu­tions through­out the game to give oth­er play­ers an op­por­tu­ni­ty and al­so to al­low me to look at var­i­ous play­ers and com­bi­na­tions." The tour saw Jer­maine Seo­posen­g­we get in among the goals, adding to South Africa's op­tions in at­tack where Tshe­go­fat­so Mak­in­ta scored nine dur­ing the qual­i­fiers for Trinidad and To­ba­go 2010 and Chris­te­lene Jan­tjies bagged a fur­ther sev­en. Now the fo­cus turns to the Ko­re­ans, who South Africa meet on Sep­tem­ber 6, at the Dwight Yorke Sta­di­um in the sun-splashed re­sort city of Scar­bor­ough, To­ba­go, in their open­ing en­counter.

"It's a chance to gain some re­al­ly valu­able ex­pe­ri­ence. We want to make an im­pact," the coach added. There was a good send-off for the squad on Mon­day as they de­part­ed for the Caribbean, in full glare of TV cam­eras, flash­ing pho­tog­ra­phers and news­men at a break­fast at Jo­han­nes­burg's OR Tam­bo Air­port "We are ex­treme­ly proud of Bant­wana's achieve­ment in qual­i­fy­ing for the 2010 U-17 Women's World Cup. We want the team to know that the whole coun­try is be­hind them in this World Cup cam­paign. We know that the team will play with pas­sion and pride to make the coun­try proud," said South African FA pres­i­dent Kirsten Ne­matan­dani as the squad was giv­en a hearty bon voy­age.