The BlackRock made their way back to Kampala after a great absence going back to 1971. I mean at that point, Obote was still President, the rugby playing General Idi Amin was in the flanks waiting to do his own version of Brutus.
The men from the most successful Irish rugby province of Leinster, sorted out our biggest predicament. The Uganda All stars were a mixture of typically the best athletes we have, in the past, present and the future. I feel even the tourists did the same.
An early downpour was the first sign of corruption with the rainmaker being sorted late and slowing it down to a drizzle, it was the usual problem of flooding at the swamp until one of the visitors improvised using a tackle bags, buoyant and displace water faster, why haven’t we thought of that before? A very cheap solution to a nascent problem. At that point I felt we had already been out thought.
Our warm up was the usual electric static run through the set pieces, the blackrock focused on mastering the pitch.
Game on proper, the big burly Ugandans were as usual focused on the tight exchanges, the scrummage was being heaved for breakfast and dinner. Absolutely delightfully to see Ugandans return to eight-man dominance after a seven-year break. Where the blackrock lacked in scrummaging they compensated by keeping the shape of the tight five and using three loose forwards instead of the traditional four. Managing only 3 scrum penalties from the visitors was pure rugby hard nose.
The line outs, both sides were initially handling their own business until a small change. The blackrock despite being smaller were making quick line outs to the maul very quick, caught out twice but still very effective and their first five pointer came off poor fringe defence from the line out. A traditional weakness of ours that was sorted. We can build around those quick small absorbing line outs.
When they realized they were out of forwards, they started the slow match of death, spread the hitting points to look for fissures, make the rucks smaller and have as many players available to continue play. On the other side, they didn’t allow the Ugandans to have a clean ruck. They were short of turning it over because they realized that would automatically be penalised. We were building those huge rucks that keep the attacking team out of continuity. Forcing a kick to nowhere.
The boot that killed us, it is the football part of the game that we fared poorly. Realizing they were up against a better conditioned team, why confront them when you can make them work from an unfavorable location.
With our backline picking a very unfavourable running location inside their half, they opted to kick, even the unpredictable Haruna settled on kicking a surprise to his coach. It was the masterclass on the other side that was shocking. Whatever projectile we hurled over the border of halfway was returned with huge interest.
The back three on the other side were armed with boots that are weapons. All kicks long distance and contestable, the nonverbal communication cues were so loud, you couldn’t miss them. In open play the boot was employed to field us off our swamp. We were caught in the headlights by all kind of footie quips, the chip, chase, the grubber and the heavy hitter. It makes me wonder, why we aren’t playing that kind of rugby sooner. It is modern and go forward.
Contact, the visitors chose their contact part and used it, they didn’t give us the same privilege.
I could rave about this game from dusk till dawn. It was like rediscovering love in Kampala. All the inefficiencies of our rugby system were brought to the front while also our strengths were greatly amplified. Instead of a humiliation, this was a proper learning curve. For any small game facet we couldn’t handle, we were given an alternative on how to do it better. It was like looking at your neighbour solve a plumbing problem that has plagued you for decades.
I left the venue in the wee hours of the morning, full of spirit and cheerful, we can actually do it, we just didn’t know exactly what to fix.
