Bafana Bafana captain Ronwen Williams has said Hugo Broos’s squad needs to ‘dream high’ as they prepare to head off to the AFCON finals in Ivory Coast next week.
Bafana are currently in camp in Stellenbosch, having gathered in the Western Cape on Friday.
Williams is one of just three players in the squad who has previous AFCON experience. He, Percy Tau and Themba Zwane were part of Stuart Baxter’s squad who reached the quarter-finals in 2019.
The captain says that they are aiming at going further than in 2019, but are under no illusions of just how difficult that challenge will be.
“Hopefully, I can go a step further than the previous one,” Williams said while chatting to SAFA media on the weekend.
“We went out in the last eight (in 2019). So, it’s possible, we need to dream high as a country, but we need to be realistic as well. You know we haven’t been part of the tournament for a very long time.
“But I’m very happy to be part of this wonderful group that we’ve got now. I think we’ve done extremely good work over the last two years or so.
“We’ve learnt valuable lessons over the last few years, and it’s just for myself and some of the players that were there at the previous AFCON, to just share our experiences, because it does get tough, having to play every three, four days.
“It’s not easy. It’s tough and you’re playing high-quality games, of consequence. Mentally, it can drain one, so that’s where myself and other senior players will just share our experiences.”
Bafana kick off their campaign against Mali on 16 January before facing Namibia on 21, and their final group game will be on 24 against Tunisia.