Home field would be great especially with how close you were last season to automatically qualifying that extra home field advantage may push you over the top.
Well at least your 21 year olds are more experienced then ones that only play one season.
that's the hope. unfortunately we will meet a monstre-generation of Nigerians, while we will have a big generational problem (if you don't have draftees, it's hard to set a decent team...), purely numerical, so it will probably be a race for the second place. Not a problem, second would mean WC tournament (to loose 3 matches probably, but South Africa never achieved this target.
but it is very early, let's see if the work will pay back, and how consolation will be.