We must stop posturing around Uganda Cranes
It is our team and our game. We all enjoyed the euphoria of beating Comoros a few weeks ago and are now looking forward to the Africa Cup of Nations in Gabon early next year.
Since then, we have all become authorities on the game, demanding bonuses for the players and arrears for coach Micho Sredojevic. We are all fronting NicholIt is our team and our game. We all enjoyed the euphoria of beating Comoros a few weeks ago and are now looking forward to the Africa Cup of Nations in Gabon early next year.as Wadada for the right full back position.
We have jumped on the blame-game bandwagon of blaming everyone but ourselves for the problems in the game;
blaming Fufa, media, government and many stakeholders. I’m talking about you, the football fans in the country – the fair weather supporters. Many of you claim to be fans of the game, and maybe you are.
But since Uganda’s 1-0 victory over Comoros, you have retreated to your shells - waiting for Uganda’s next home match, the 2018 Fifa World Cup qualifier against Congo Brazzaville at Namboole, to show your passion and love for the game.
Now, there is no manual for supporting the game of football.
Neither is there a scientific method of weighing and gauging a football fan’s love for the game. But simple logic dictates that league football is the oxygen breathed by national team football teams world over.
You can’t claim to like the game when you don’t identify with the league. In fact, Uganda Cranes matches are now associated with as many wannabees as pure fans.
That national team we all love is, true, a representation of the 37 million Ugandans but it remains just a fraction of the composition of the product that football is. So why can’t all Ugandans identify with the Uganda Premier League? The Denis Onyangos and Farouk Miyas we love were made by the Ugandan League. They did not fall from heaven like mana.
The same applies for Tonny Mawejje and Geoffrey Massa. In fact one of the national team’s more consistent performers over the last one year, has been Joseph Ochaya, who is actually playing in the Uganda Premier League. You can’t claim to be a fan of the national team and not a fan of the Uganda Premier League. It is practically impossible.
Early affection
We all love the beautiful game because the entry point for nearly all of us was an early affection for a particular club. And actually, the true measure of football is in the League where the games come thick and fast and players and fans are routinely engaged. National team football matches are sometimes spontaneous.
And when they are scheduled it is rare for the national side to play more than four competitive games in a year. So before we sit cross-legged in our armchairs to point fingers on issues concerning our game, let us earn the moral right by actually watching the Ugandan League.
I have loved the raw passion exhibited by Onduparaka fans, who have shown they are here to stay with their team in the topflight.
I have also been won over by the professional trends KCCA FC is putting in place to return the yellow army back to Lugogo.
And while it is a simple fallback position of blaming the management of clubs for not doing enough to attract fans to the stadia, the fans too must loosen up their mindsets and understand that the game is theirs and no one will change our football but them. Azam will not transform the game to the standards we want, neither will SuperSport.
The Pay TVs may help the process but their contribution can’t be an end in itself. It starts with you and me.
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So Oilers are human after all. The National Basketball League three-time champions have now lost to KIU, Power and Pemba Warriors.
All of a sudden, they look beatable. For the neutrals, there couldn’t be better news in the basketball league. I will be hoping that someone upsets Oilers in the playoffs seeing how a historic four-peat isn’t what Ugandan basketball needs.
But if they do it, then they will have etched their name in history as the greatest basketball team in the record books of the game in the country.
For now we can only hope that they triumph at the Zone V Africa Club Championships in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania next month.
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This week, the 2016 Cecafa Women Championship drew to a close in Jinja after Tanzania upstaged Kenya 2-1 in the final. Uganda finished fourth after being rolled over by Ethiopia in the third-place playoff match.
The tournament that was played in Njeru had glitches here and there but ultimately Fufa and Cecafa deserve the plaudits for a job well done. Yes there was no sponsor. With one, there could have been prize money and the event would have been certainly marketed in a better way.
But the lack of sponsorship did not stop the inaugural tournament from going ahead.
And it is fair to assume that next year’s Cecafa Women Championship will be a better spectacle than the 2016 edition. It will take ages for women’s football to reach parity with the men but a journey of 1,000 miles begins with one step.
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