FIVE YEARS LATER, RUGBY CRANES WIN AT LEGENDS
Ugandan fans were in good voice as their side rallied to beat Kenya and win the Elgon Cup. PHOTO BY EDDIE CHICCO
For many a rugby fan, 2010 might have faded ages ago.
Unless memories are stretched very close to their elastic limits, there are few things from five years ago of great significance – on the pitch.
So what do you remember about that year or rugby season? At least the memorial stone at the entrance of Kyadondo Rugby Grounds is a start.
The terrorist attack that killed over 70 football fans watching the Fifa World Cup final between Spain and Netherlands should never fade like that.
“On that night, my phone rang so many times,” Brian Tabaruka, MTN Heathens coach at the time, reminisces.
“So many of my relatives and friends thought I could have been there,” he adds. Tabaruka, like many other rugby players, opt to watch most of their sports in that vicinity. It always has to be Kyadondo or Legends, previously Kampala Rugby Football Club (KRFC).
That blast came only a day after Rugby Cranes’ 21-5 loss to Kenya away in Nairobi in that season’s Elgon/Victoria Cup tournament which included Zimbabwe.
In fact, the team had only returned by road that morning with nothing to celebrate that even Jonathan Onen’s try hardly deserved mention.
Beyond the tragedy, three weeks prior, Uganda had hosted Zimbabwe’s Sables at KRFC on match day two of the competition.
Centres Michael Wokorach and Timothy Mudoola and prop Brian Odongo scored a try apiece in 24-15 victory that put Uganda in the driving seat.
Benon Kiiza (2) and Robert Seguya added conversions. Kiiza also kicked a penalty. Kenya had beaten the Sables 11-10 in the opener in Nairobi.
Little did anyone know that that was the last time Rugby Cranes would play at KRFC, today’s Legends, for another five years.
In the years superseding that game, KRFC was sold and the national team had to play their entire internationals at Kyadondo. Of course, that lull ended last weekend as Uganda beat Kenya 30-25 to overturn a 20-17 deficit and clinch a first Elgon Cup in three years with the biggest crowd in years attending.
The highs and lows of Uganda rugby have been at Legends, the pioneer venue for the game. It’s where a youthful Rugby Cranes lost 5-3 to Morocco with Seguya missing a penalty in September, 2006.
A then-world cup bound Namibia fell to a 21-19 defeat eight years ago, perhaps the biggest in Uganda’s history. In 2009, Tunisia whipped Uganda 41-17 at the same venue in the sun.
Those five years have flown by too quickly. To think that Wokorach and Odongo, then upstarts are now seniors, Mudoola is retired, and Seguya now coaches the Rugby Cranes puts it into perspective.It’s been long...
