The Uganda Rugby Cranes 7s team are four-time African Champions. What a team! What an achievement!!
The victory put Coach Tolbert Onyango in a class of one, as the only tactician to have won the prestigious crown on four separate occasions.
In the same vein, dependables Phillip Wokorach and Adrian Kasito are the only class of two to have four winners’ medals as players.
Owing to the recent win, Uganda will again be part of the Challenger Series to have another go at the HSBC SVNS. This will be the sixth consecutive time of asking.
Well, Nnalubaale Sports believes it is the right time to ask some tough questions, and hope that we shall spur honest conversation.
It is really no one’s fault in particular but, we seem to have stalled with our international sevens explorations and need a change if we are to engage an even higher gear.
It is not many questions, but rather just one: What is the plan for Uganda Sevens going into 2025?
In the five years past, we have collected ‘participation certificates’ from a million challenger and repechage series which is not a bad thing.
But, after these are done, we get back into the Africa 7s (which always serve as a qualifier), ready to repeat the process, and hoping Cinderella will walk down the ballroom in a glass slipper.
To stress this point further, Uganda are the 2024 Africa 7s champions and will be back in the Challenger Series.
Albert Einstein defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting different results. Something needs to give.
We need to empower the players, on top of everything else. It is quite clear that the Uganda 7s programs is levels above their immediate competition, save for Kenya and South Africa.
This can be evidenced by the success of the team at the All Africa games, and now the just concluded Africa 7s.
But, if we are to get out of the ‘honorary participation’ rut and crack the upper echelon, we need to lift our level of competition, lest Madagascar and Cote d’Ivoire will level up and God forbid, usurp our piece on the global participation pie.
We must make our 7s players elite, energetic, and highly athletic. Uganda has been renowned on the global stage for having smaller-frame athletes. That in itself is not an issue if we have equipped them with the apt preparation.
High-Performance Programs
More than we care to admit, discipline has been our major undoing whenever the big stage beckons. And our opponents seem to know when to incite our erratic sides.
We seem to forget we are an amateur rugby-playing nation, and a few victories over Kenya here and there do well to hide that fact.
But, while the best in the World are going to play against each other in the Olympics in Paris, we are going to be seated on our laurels.
If we can organize delegations for airport arrivals and extravagant celebratory parties, we can surely send our players to experience high-performance and skilling sevens programs.
Investment for Improvement
Last week on Saturday, the budget allocation to National Council of Sports Federations/Associations for financial year 2024/2025 had Uganda Rugby Union comfortable in the second category with two plus billions.
Yes, you read that right, 2,483,565,535 Ugandan shillings is what they accept from government and Rugby 7s performances are the reason for that chuck of the tax payers money.
Union tabled the shorter version of the sport to NCS with Kenya’s success on the global stage as a benchmark and the sports regulatory body bought the idea hence funding.
With the two recent African titles, the budget raised from millions to a billion and now, we are talking 2.5 billion. So, why not give Caesar what belongs to Caesar?
We can’t afford to let this momentum of the Africa 7s win die down, but rather, fly the boys out to a world-class gym, feeding, and training program.
We can not afford to wait for the announcement of the Safari Sevens and remember to call the boys to lift tractor tyres at Kyadondo Rugby Club every morning.
For what these boys have done, they are beyond just tyres at Kyadondo. The conditioning needs to get better. The feeding needs to get more intentional.
If we can’t have them playing across several summer invitationals with players from higher-performance environments, we sure as hell ought to have them enrolled in high-quality program camps to up their ante.
This works well for Uganda given the nature of the depth of talent. We have a small number to deal with and can afford to meet the costs.
Grassroots Development
It is not like the U20 and University pathways programs are yielding fruits. They were a manifesto trigger to make people happy and we haven’t heard of them since voting ended and winners were announced.
I shake just imagining Uganda at the World Rugby U20 Trophy, let alone championship competitions.
If we cannot afford to be serious with grassroots programs, that are supposed to feed the bigger teams, we shall continue playing BAZINGA with the players who look like they can compete, and continue enabling an amateur environment.
The consequences of this are that they don’t paint a beautiful and reliable picture. Rugby will continue to stay in the rearview mirror as a hobby to use for fitness.
Learning from Neighbors
Maybe the noisy neighbours are right to make jokes at our expense. We haven’t helped the situation as we keep feeding them with material courtesy of the ‘Vibes’ mentality in the Pearl of Africa.
They are a perfect example we need to use. Not too long ago, we took the Shujaa to the trenches in a muddy affair at Kyadondo, beat them, and went on to win the Africa 7s.
Things were looking good for Uganda in April 2022. Kenya Rugby Union went back to the drawing board, made some tough calls, painfully lost their seat on the HSBC circuit, clawed their way through the repechage, and now, they do have their HSBC slot for 2025 assured.
In the same time, the more things have changed for Uganda, the more they have stayed the same. Uganda slid back into ‘learning from the experiences’, running hashtags, a few video clips of bline sprinkled here and there, and still not making the final four in the Repechage after more than four years of playing on that circuit calendar.
Kenya, in a short turnaround, have put daylight between themselves and Uganda. So much so that, they can afford to send their second-string side to the Africa 7s, while the first team readies for the Olympics.
Breaking the Cycle
Kawowo Sports reporter Ernest Akorebirungi said it best, “the country now lies in the no man’s land of the 7s world.”
Something has to give. The approach to this needs to change. We are actually enraged. Is it the players? Is it the coaches? Is it the ineptitude of the administration, happy with a few cross-border trips for the boys, just to write beautiful reports for Rugby Afrique and World Rugby?
The low-hanging fruits, some of which already exist in URU’s strategic plan and were mentioned in manifestos, include; reopening the 7s academy and organising more schools and university tournaments should be a constant.
These will do wonders in readying our players, and establish a conveyor belt of breeding superstars.
Playing more invitational tournaments where the players and team have free range to express themselves, experiment, and are not under pressure to deliver results will make a difference when they get to the business end of things.
The HSBC SVNS qualification might have gotten tougher after the format redesign but, can we crack the last four of the Repechage repeatedly at least?
I might be advocating for change in the way this machine works when the current situation is exactly the goal. If that is the case, I apologize for making you read this tirade.
Courtesy Photos
