Handball : World women’s championship, bitter-sweet performance for Cameroon and Africa

By Stephen TADAHA

The handball lionesses of Cameroon failed to win their final game in the main round of the 2023 Women’s World championship.

The girls of Tabeth Njantou bowed to Senegal 22-20 despite leading 12-7 at half time.

This means the Lionesses finished bottom of group I of the main round with zero point.

The performance which placed them in the 24th position on the overall classification, was still not better than the 22nd and 20th spots respectively achieved in 2005 and 2017.

In six games, Cameroon lost 5, with 2 in the preliminary round ( Montenegro and Hungary) and 3 in the main round (Sweden, Croatia and Senegal) and won one against Paraguay in the preliminary round.

The girls in the six games scored a total of 105 goals (57 in the preliminary round and 48 in the main round) and conceded 170 ( 87 in the preliminary round and 83 in the main round), thus a goal difference of minus 65.

With four representatives, the African continent for the first time had three representatives in the main round.

The best African nation at the competition remains Angola ranked 15th on the general classification table after finishing fourth in group II of the main round. In six games, the pearls won two, drew one and lost 3.

Team Senegal on their part are 18th while the fourth African representative, Congo will either be ranked 25th or 26th depending on the result of their final game against Iceland on December 13, 2023. The Congolese won all three group games in the President’s cup.

Ateba Engadi Laeticia Petronie of Cameroon ends the competition as Cameroon’s topscorer with 32 goals and 14th on the competition’s topscoring chart at the end of the main round, meanwhile Senegal’s Sagna Soukeina, with 40 goals is Africa’s topscorer and third in the competition.