7s side set for world stage

Uganda’s Ramadhan Govule in action against Wales in the HSBC World Rugby Sevens Series in Dubai last year.

What you need to know:

  • The team has done pre-dawn training for no less than three months.

Kampala. This is it! This is the biggest week in Uganda rugby, at least for the shorter code, the 7s, as the national team seeks to belong to the table of men.
The Rugby Cranes will this week contend with 11 other teams in Hong Kong for the lone slot to join the lucrative HSBC World Rugby Sevens Series for the next one year as a core side.
A victory on Sunday in Hong Kong will ensure that Uganda gets to play on the 10-leg tour that has trips to Dubai, Cape Town, Wellington, Sydney, Las Vegas and Vancouver.
Hong Kong, Singapore, Paris and London are the other cities that get to host the tour that has powerhouses South Africa, Fiji and New Zealand as the star attractions.

“If we qualify, our lives as rugby players will change, rugby in Uganda too will have to change,” Kenya-based Philip Wokorach, the team’s biggest star, said.
The team left for Hong Kong – 9, 116km away on Sunday – hoping that the 22 degree Celsius temperatures and five-hour difference are only faint footnotes in pursuit of the ultimate dream.
African champions Uganda are placed in Pool E along with Tonga, Germany and Jamaica. Hosts Hong Kong, Chile, Sri Lanka and Namibia are in pool F. Spain, Papua New Guinea, Uruguay and Guyana complete the draw in pool G which is the near-perfect slide-show for the seventh leg of the World Series.

Only the top two teams will be guaranteed passage to the quarterfinals slated for Saturday.
Two other best third-placed teams will also sneak into the top eight draw.
The semifinals and finals will be held on Sunday. The team is armed with the experience of winning the Africa Cup 7s last September. It also featured in the first two legs of the World Series in Dubai and Cape Town at the back end of last year.
“Just like anyone else on the team, I badly want to showcase what I can do on the big occasions because such moments define what kind of player you are, I love them,” Wokorach said.

As Wokorach relishes the moment, coach Tolbert Onyango is thrilled to have added a 7s Sevens strength and conditioning coach in Kenyan Geoffrey Kimani two months ago.
“Our intensity was low compared to the other sides when we first competed last year, we have been working on raising it to a higher level” Kimani said recently.
“Apart from intensity, our tackling needs to improve plus we lost the ball a lot whenever we got into contact,” he added.
The team has done pre-dawn training for no less than three months.