It is without a doubt Allan Otim failed to coach the rugby sevens this weekend. It felt like a coaching loss. My personal favourite was the game against Tunisia.
The away team reduced to five men, the captain positions himself sensibly on the flank to wait for a solid tap with the opponent deep in their twenty-two.
Instead, the player closest to the referee signals for a scrum down, the skippers’ body language is one of expiration, clearly that wasn’t his decision.
The resulting scrum is played to the blind side and Otim (Daniels) not the coach tries to use sheer pace, easy defense for Tunisia who win a line out and subsequently score.
The Cranes didn’t lose this game but lost the tournament. Even the most illiterate of fans had understood that moment put the Cranes in second place to the Cheetahs.
How did we get here? By mistake I presume. I could draw from personal history as one of the few coaches to ever work at every level of the game domestically to look at how we blood coaching and why it is going to fail us at the international level. The others being Kevin Makmot, Nkamba Alvin and surprise Otim Allan. Three of us came through the Kyambogo system, tag, high school, university, championship and Premiership.
What does it take to become a coach? According to the governing body, you need to be certified with a bare minimum of level one.
That takes 1 to 3 days of intense training and supplementary online tests. This is open to anyone willing to make it for the course and is usually provided free of charge by the Union.
What usually this does, is it is an open advert; to lift my ban I was required to do that. I declined and my ban has never been lifted formally. This doesn’t mean it isn’t important it just means, the mother body relieves themselves of the burden of scouting for actual coaching talent.
Most of the involved are volunteers limited by geography and other career options. So, on paper a certain quota is met, training is given. The goodmen filter through. On the other side the medical unit rigorously vet their candidates on entry. Their quality is impeccable.
When I campaigned to be the technical director for rugby, I had a 1-hour meeting with Rhinos, they questioned me about my credentials and my ability, I believe my expertise in the wide world of sports wasn’t enough even at policy level.
Imagine this year, when we had to work with them in Kyambogo, never have I seen a unit of coaching so resistant to knowledge of even players I was handing over after years of grooming.
At the end of the season, I was relieved we hadn’t been relegated but most importantly we wouldn’t have to work with such clueless people again. Yet the head coach at Rhinos leads the U 20 Uganda side. I mean we never made the play offs, what gives our coaching staff merit to handle the next generation? maybe a coaching tracker is necessary.
The system is built to reward obedience never initiative. My running joke among coaches is their wives come second. Most coaches fall into two brackets, those who do it for the sheer joy it brings to them, the 80 minutes feel like a good game of chess.
The other side are paid amateurs, they don’t love the game less but they believe it has to relieve an itch in their lives. This means the sheer disparity in availability will always show.
The Union always showing lack of initiative always puts the two camps in a civil war of the haves and have nots. Making broken time payment promises they plan to renegade upon. Meaning the charade is to award those who can bend to their own voodoo work policies.
That is why almost all coaching staff are men who need the cheque cashed not the job done, they also know the wrong word will have them terminated. So can we always have the best coach for the job? Your guess.
The it worked once, in 2007, Uganda was at the pinnacle of African rugby. Those who won praise the wonders of the training camp in South Africa, subsequently nearly every Ugandan team or sort of it has had to make the trip down. Is it still working? Well, you tell me?
Uganda won the sevens by what I still refer to as luck and Philip Wokorach, the golden goose. In a way that generation blew the door off the hinges, they improvised most of the time, learnt a few lessons that made them world class.
In a way, they were generous enough to pass time and skills to the next generation. The catch even the coaching staff were learning on the job, we are still too early in transition to even understand the impact of the last class.
The current coach worked with that team doesn’t mean he was good enough to be there. He also made the cardinal sin of walking into giant shoes (Tolbert Onyango).
Aversion to record keeping, I have always asked the people I work with to draft reports but in the same spirit I forward my view of events written. I suggested a coaching library. Most of the small problems we have can be revisited.
I can recount enough games where we learnt to reverse a loss, the Germany problem. For a longtime we couldn’t fly past that hurdle. It came down to academics, peer reviews and at the grand stage of the World Cup.
It would also inform us that players aren’t made of glass; they should play as much as possible not sticking to one story of it worked before.
Lack of appreciation of being favourites. Uganda have failed to understand that the infrastructure we possess for rugby is more than appropriate to breeze past any of the countries who made the trip to Kampala. The shock of the fans at the results should teach the team the value of backing themselves.
My verdict it is a systemic problem but the sevens coach is right to receive the wrath of failure mainly in his selection where he convinced us we are average while keeping good players away.
He never subbed the captain who looked a little out of breath sometimes. Anyway, January is coming soon!
