Kenya 34 Cranes 0: A new low for Ugandan rugby
Magona during the first leg. PHOTO BY E. CHICCO
KAMPALA
Peter Magona doesn’t enjoy the allure of the media as much as his former Rugby Cranes teammate Robert Seguya. He prefers to stay silent or at best, challenge the reasoning behind the questions put to him by journalists. On the other hand, Seguya loves the attention that comes with his work.
Nairobi showed the two extremes. In the aftermath of the U-19s loss to Kenya, Seguya got his boys down and spoke to them for a long time. He had watched on as his team’s 15-10 advantage from Kampala was wiped away in a 27-12 loss. Hours later, Seguya was there to see his former national captain Magona feel worse.
As darkness fell, a disconsolate Magona refused to talk to the media. The national team coach perhaps couldn’t believe what he had just seen.
Kenya had just beaten Uganda 34-0 to bury the 21-14 loss here as a meager blip and win an eighth Elgon Cup. They had just entrenched their dominance on the contest. “I have run short of words and I don’t know what to say but to sum it up that the boys didn’t come. “Even the drift and run plans we corrected they could not execute,” Magona would later manage to say.
But, that was far from where the major worries arose. This team is firmly in decline and the win at Kyadondo is the only one Rugby Cranes have managed in their last seven games.
This year and the last will count as dead years. Magona has presided over the slide that started in 1A last year and has finished in 1C. The results haven’t been coming but you can hardly remember the last time the national team left the pitch without any points on board.
Knowing that this was a second string Kenyan side, Kenya A, will hurt even more for the entire rugby fraternity. They have only been three victories in 10 games going back to 2012 and remedies don’t seem a certainty.
RECENT RESULTS
2013
Kenya 16-17 Uganda
Uganda 13-19 Kenya
Kenya 52-11 Uganda
Madagascar 38-24 Uganda
2014
Uganda 19-22 Ivory Coast
Senegal 32-33 Uganda
Uganda 21-14 Kenya
Kenya 34-0 Uganda
