Decision not to take Kimani to Hong Kong was shocking

Having achieved the distinction of being a team on the rise after winning last year’s Africa 7s, there has been an ebb and flow about the Rugby Cranes.

There was something of a whiplash twist after the team provided both pleasure and rapture during the recently ended World Rugby Sevens Series qualifier in Hong Kong.

A horribly delicious suspense thriller, which sandwiched a hiding at the hands of eventual beaten finalists Germany with handy wins over Tonga and Jamaica, came to a head when Papua New Guinea astonishingly snatched victory from the jaws of defeat. Rugby Cranes players verged on the distraught when it dawned on them that the dream to become a core nation on the World Rugby Sevens Series in the 2017/18 season had reached a terminal edge.

The precipice in the ending had been threatening to happen. During the qualifying event, there had been a collective panic about Rugby Cranes players running on fumes. Fatigue permeated the surfaces and textures of their performances.

It was up there with the receptions from kickoffs when taking stock of Uganda’s problems. Strength and conditioning (S&C) - or the lack of it - was not supposed to count as one of Uganda’s vulnerabilities.

Not after S&C expert Geoffrey Kimani was brought in to tie up the loose ends. To be fair to Kimani, he painstakingly did just that. But then eyes were popped when the Kenyan did not travel with the team to Hong Kong.

Admired for his thoughtfulness and candour, Uganda Rugby Union (URU) CEO Ramsey Olinga offered a reason as to why this was the case. “[Kimani] was not needed in Hong Kong. He had done his work in the build up to the tournament. S&C is done months in advance,” Olinga told NTV on Tuesday.

It is startling that Olinga remains iron-clad adamant about Kimani outliving his utility. If this is indeed URU’s position, then the body has - not for the first time - shown itself incapable of moving with the times. S&C is important both before and during a tournament.

S&C coaches work in conjunction with physiotherapists to conduct post game recovery sessions. They also offer a team’s backroom staff an extra pair of eyes from a tactical point of view. The new World Rugby rule that allows a team to substitute a player multiple times is also best exploited with a S&C coach offering their two cents.

If there is to be a chance of an uptick in Sevens rugby any time soon, URU will need to cast aside the Stone Age thinking that its otherwise affable CEO showcased midweek. If Uganda intends to join the table of men (read become a core nation), it need to behave like one. It is as simple as that!

***************

Why deep-lying playmaker role suits Mutyaba

Mike Mutebi let off a sardonic laugh before cutting his interviewer midway. “No,” he said, his eyes bulging, “We did not concede the goals because we played a back three. The back three is here to stay.”

Police had used two goals in the final five minutes of a Uganda Premier League (UPL) match against KCCA to earn a share of the spoils.

The comeback had looked improbable after Muzamir Mutyaba gave the Yellow Lads what then looked like an unassailable two-goal buffer with 15 minutes left to play.

But then, five minutes later, midfield bulwark Ivan Ntege played a back pass to Denis Rukundo. The defender made a kamikaze mistake of misjudging the pace and trajectory of the ball.

The Cops could not believe their luck as they halved the deficit. It got better for them minutes later when they got back on terms as KCCA struggled to recover from the blow of cheaply letting their opponents back in the game.

To the keen observer, Mutebi was endearingly sincere in swatting away the suggestion that his back three wreaked intolerable damage on the day. Things started to fall apart for the Yellow Lads when Ntege made the colossal error to play with his back facing the opposition goal whilst deep in his half.

Mutebi has made it excruciatingly obvious that he is disheartened by Ntege’s travails when - as he always seems to do - the holding midfielder wins back possession.

The KCCA manager has intimated at this having been what informed his decision to deploy Mutyaba as a deep-lying playmaker in his side’s last two continental home matches.

The midfielder has gotten immeasurably better playing a role that has brought the likes of Andrea Pirlo and Sergio Busquets fame and acclaim.

Mutyaba is not fearsomely built to enforce as is Ntege, but he reads the diagonal lines quite well and passes even better.
It’s not a striking coincidence that his best games in continental club football this season have come when he is playing deep (Mamelodi Sundowns and Al Masry). It should not be lost on us that he put in an anonymous display in the home game against Primiero de Agosto when Mutebi asked him to play in an advanced position. The deep-lying playmaker role suits Mutyaba’s ponderous - if slightly languid - style.

Having missed out on going to the 2017 Africa Cup of Nations finals because (as one member on the Fufa technical team told your columnist) he is a second late, could Mutyaba have discovered a role that will see him wear the red strip of his country? Time will tell.

What we now know....

We now know that Uganda finished sixth at the Zone V Africa Golf Championship in Kitwe, Zambia.

This after the team’s star players failed to find their bearings on the difficult par-72 Nkana Golf Course.

We know that no Ugandan player struggled as much as Ronald Otile did. The poster boy of Ugandan golf went through the ignominy of suffering a stunning 7&6 defeat against Kenyan rookie Samuel Njoroge. The loss proved decisive as Uganda lost the quarterfinal match-up contested over one foursomes and two singles rounds.

We know that Uganda beat Namibia to give itself a chance of placing fifth at the championship. This, though, did not quite materialise as the battling half a point that Becca Mwanja and Otile got in the foursomes against Swaziland was wiped away but stinging singles losses suffered by Daniel Baguma (7&6) and Denis Asaba (3&2).

Uganda eventually placed sixth, a humiliating climb-down from last year’s third placement.