Unassuming Tolbert Onyangohas every right to bask in glory

A cacophony of cheers was ringing through a rain-soaked Phillip Omondi Stadium. The man responsible for the scenes of joy unconfined was on his knees by the corner flag, pointing to the heavens. Robert Ssentongo was thanking God after having earlier expertly swept home a rebound to put KCCA FC two-nil up.
Perhaps the striker had something mortal to thank -- the sloppiness of Express FC’s netminder. “Opio! Opio!” came the cry from the Express dugout. With his face twisted into a frown, Abu Kigenyi, the Red Eagles’ goalkeeping coach, gesticulated to Emmanuel Opio what he ought to have done.

The Red Army, as Express fans are widely known, joined Kigenyi in venting animatedly about Opio’s intractable incompetence.
For Kigenyi, who trudged back to take his seat in the dugout whilst shaking his head in disbelief, everything was but a blur. Opio’s clanger had a strong sense of déjà vu about it.
It was two decades ago that Kigenyi without a scintilla of pressure gifted Gavin Lane an equaliser that got Orlando Pirates out of jail. Thanks to that equaliser, the Buccaneers played in the Caf Champions League (then known as African Cup of Champions Clubs) final at Express’s expense. They went on to beat Ivorian outfit Asec Abidjan 3-2 on aggregate in the final.
Opio’s shaky display against KCCA FC might not have been on a similar scale, but one got the sense that the goalkeeper lost much more than just a match midweek. Doubtless his confidence has disappeared into ether.

It won’t help matters that fans will con-tinue to regard him as something of a singular catastrophe for the Red Eagles as the season plays out. This is when Opio needs a goalkeeping coach to help him navigate the murky waters and win back the approval of the Red Army. Kigenyi is not that person in case you held him up as an option just as his employer at Wankulukuku does. Why? Because he was trained to coach outfield players and not goalkeepers. This is why Mityana-Utoda gave him the greenlight to take over the club’s coaching reins when he returned to Uganda after a stint in southern Africa.

Kigenyi might have been a decent goalkeeper during his heyday, but, contrary to what many Ugandan clubs think, standing between the posts for a protracted period doesn’t give one leeway to oversee the goalkeeping department.
This unusual approach is not born out of calculation, or at least not primarily, but of necessity. It has left a trail of destruction regardless with up and coming goalkeepers losing some of their specificity and power. Goalkeeping coaches need to be equipped with tools such that they can be in a position to exhaustively polish the different facets to the art. While first hand experience helps, a studied approach even works out better.

Credit must be given to Fufa for noticing the gap and trying to plug it. The football governing body acknowledged for the first time at the tail-end of June that coaching goalkeepers is a specialist art. Bob Broweays, a Fifa instructor from Belgium, conducted training clinics for goalkeeping coaches at the Fufa Technical Centre in Njeru. The Belgian’s tone was deliberate, sombre, and terrifying in its certainty when he said there’s work to be done after working with 27 so-called goalkeeping coaches. Kigenyi was amongst the lot. Events that transpired at the Phillip Omondi Stadium this past week prove Broweays right. There is indeed work to be done.

Unassuming Tolbert Onyangohas every right to bask in glory

Not even your columnist’s hand would have shot up if a question putting Uganda and Africa Cup 7s champions in the same sentence was posed a fortnight ago.
The empty blast of sour breath from Uganda Rugby Union (URU), which among other things saw the national 7s team run on fumes, meant that the unhesitating answer as to whether Africa would be conquered was a resounding no. The team was knocked sideways to the point of needing a cash contribution from its own coach -- the indefatigable Tolbert Onyango -- to make the trip to the airport.

While Ugandan rugby’s governing body did not pull up any trees, Onyango -- a former Kenyan international -- sought to work however he could to make his team and success go hand in glove. Onyango has always been in tune with the players around him. The difficulty of getting to the top strengthens the lure as much as his resolve.
So as the Andrew Owor-led URU held out a blank sheet of paper where it should have had answers, Onyango did not despair even when it was the easy thing to do. The complexity of the task at hand did not strip him of his distinctive ready smile and desire to help. He left Uganda for the Kenyan capital where the 12-nation tournament was to be held quietly optimistic.
Although Onyango set himself a target of making the top four, he never ruled out the possibility of going all the way. One, however, couldn’t help but pick out the glaring mismatch between rhetoric and reality.

Despite having lots of flair in the team (think Phillip Wokorach, Ramathan Govule and James Odong to mention but three), the team was devoid of an innate leader. The smart money was on egos getting in the way of an unlikely success story. Nothing of the sort happened. Uganda would instead go on to bestride the tournament in a manner its competitors never came close.
Scalps of Kenya and Zimbabwe were picked up along the way. As a result, Uganda will this year turn out in two legs (Dubai and Cape Town) on the fabled HSBC World Series.

One would expect URU to seize the initiative by offering assurances that 7s rugby will no longer feel as lonesome as it did during its period in the wilderness, but alas! Uganda’s top rugby official Owor had an impromptu meeting this past week in which he told the sport’s technicians that focus will tilt more towards 15s rugby because it continues to capture the fancy of sponsors. Owor also popped eyes when he erroneously stated that World Rugby will cater for airfares and accommodation of “a few players” during the Dubai 7s and Cape Town 7s. The gaffe just about shows how out of touch he is with the goings-on in the sport.
Whether Ugandan rugby deserves much better is anyone’s call really. What isn’t in doubt is the fact that 7s rugby in Uganda should no longer be treated as a second cousin. Going forward, expect to be treated to an arm wrestle between 7s and 15s rugby in Uganda.

The cross-pollination of players like Odong, Pius Ogena, Lawrence Ssebuliba, Eric Kasiita and the Wokorachs (Phillip and Michael) could turn out to be detrimental with player burnout primed to rear its ugly head.
What this speaks to is the need to widen the player base by taking the sports to upcountry outposts.
If winning the Africa Cup 7s title is the greatest feat of the current URU top brass, then it is also paradoxically a great challenge. Formulating a strategy to sustain success on both the 15s and 7s front is the way to go. There are no two ways about this! Hands up if you think the current establishment can pull this feat off?