As part of preparations for the upcoming Africa Junior Championships CAF is to conduct an MRI test on all the participating teams come Friday.
The MRI scan will determine the bone density of the wrists of players to ensure an accuracy of at least within one percent under the age of eighteen. This will ensure all players are of the required age of 17.
All eight teams that have qualified for the tournament slated for Morocco will have to go through the mandatory test. The 2013 African Junior Championship opens on Saturday afternoon with host Morocco taking on Gabon at the Mohammed V Stadium in Casablanca, before Tunisia take on championship debutant, Botswana immediately after.
The practice, first introduced by CAF at the 2011 tournament I Rwanda had eight Gambian players fail the test.
Last year, after CAF directed every national association to conduct the test, eighteen players from Nigeria and ten from Ghana failed the test and were disqualified from their respective camps.
One team optimistic about their chances of passing the test is the Ghanaian team. This is because of a thorough in- house test, which they conducted even before the qualifiers. Meanwhile, The Black Starlets arrived in Morocco two days ago to start an early preparation for their first match against arch- rivals Nigeria, on the 14th April at the Stade Marakkech.
The other remaining teams in Group B, a group tagged ‘The Group of Death’ are Congo and Ivory Coast. The first four teams to qualify into the semi final automatically qualify for a slot at the 2013 FIFA U17 World Cup in UAE.
