Why Uganda not winning the Gold Cup this year is a blessing in disguise

This undoubtedly sounds like a very strange final headline coming from someone who for the last three months has been banging on about what needs to be done to improve rugby in Uganda. And winning is normally synonymous with sporting success, isn’t it? Bear with me.

As these weekly columns are written and submitted before the results of the previous weekends matches are known, never intending to be match reports, the outcomes are actually irrelevant.

No matter what happens against Zimbabwe though, Uganda cannot win the tournament. Namibia is away over the hill with that accolade. This is a good thing. (Rugby Cranes defeated Zimbabwe Sables 38-12. Ed.)
Next year World Cup qualification begins, the most important phase of the rugby cycle for any of the lesser teams that have to qualify. Uganda is in with a chance, be in no doubt. However, had this young team won the Gold Cup, the levels of self-satisfaction and dare I say it complacency that would have crept in and negatively impacted on the continued desire to improve would have been catastrophic.

Everyone knows we came tantalizingly close at one point against Namibia and that the scoreline could have been very different. But it wasn’t and if Uganda wants to play with the big boys in Japan in 2019 then there is still much to do, notwithstanding a very good showing this year.

The basic elements are coming together well and we have a coach who is capable of ultimately delivering the goods but the Cranes remain a work-in-progress and they have much more to give.
A World Cup Final berth would be worth millions to Ugandan rugby. Of dollars that is, not shillings. We would be indelibly sketched onto the global sporting map. The careers of all involved would be changed immeasurably. It can be done, there is time to do it and I so hope that some of the observations and possibilities I have shared with you over the last three months actually turn into fact.
So, to wrap up my final column on 15’s rugby in this series then, I would like to save a last word for the media, in all its shapes and forms.

This publication has been good enough to allocate me type space to bang the rugby drum.
If our beloved sport can continue to be kept in the front of all stakeholders’ minds via every possible media outlet, then another group will have played its part in helping to build our sporting present and future. I thank you all.
*Burley is a Ugandan-British dual national who has lived in Uganda for 30 years.

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