What KCCA’s landmark season has taught us

KCCA’s season might have ended with a whimper after Tunisian outfit Club Africain put paid the Ugandan champions’ continental hopes, but the 4-0 hiding in Radès tells only half the story. The past twelve months have seen the tectonic plates in the Ugandan club’s stead shift to the point of producing a maiden league and cup double.
A Caf Confederation Cup group stage placement has also spared Ugandan club football from having yet another stain on its reputation. It had been a long while since a Ugandan club reached the business end of a Caf inter-club event.
The Kasasiro Boys’ continental voyage has owed much to Mike Mutebi being exceptional in his intelligence.

It is only beginning to be clear to some, but this column has always drawn attention to the importance of having a football identity. It offers a sense of direction and purpose to go along with.
One of the things that have disadvantaged Ugandan football is the vivid lack of identity. It has ended up looking like a typical teenager still trying to find who they are. It is at such crossroads that distressful tales have been authored. It is remarkable that the merits of having an identity strain the credulity of many football coaches plying their trade in Uganda. Mutebi cannot be counted among those doubting Thomases. The KCCA manager has stated in no uncertain terms that he wants his team to play an attractive brand of football at whichever cost. This identity is also lending itself to KCCA’s under-17 team. Soon, when all concerned parties are sold onto the identity, and are singing from the same hymn sheet, the Kasasiro Boys will take some stopping. Eyes will certainly pop as they indeed did during the 3-1 win against FUS Rabat. The interplay involving Sadam Juma, Muzamir Mutyaba and Jackson Nunda was such an eye-popping experience.
Speaking of eye-popping experiences, Julius Raymond Kabugo provided one on Thursday when he announced that he will step down from his position as KCCA chairman on August 1. Those who know Kabugo closely were not surprised as he has projected himself as someone who has always prefers a nudge to a shove. Work and personal commitments provided that proverbial nudge (overstaying one’s welcome is what usually triggers a shove).

In a country where administrators cling onto positions and christen themselves ‘historical’ for delivering the holy grail, Kabugo’s voluntary resignation definitely transcends expectations. Bowing out in the manner Kabugo intends to was never expected to be part of the script especially after his administration led KCCA to the first league and cup double in its 54-year history. This alone should have draped Kabugo in a cloak of near-invincibility while also seeing him ring fence the top job. This is what has come to be known as ‘big man syndrome.’
The malaise is a quintessentially Ugandan problem, which has in recent times showed no signs of abating. Against such a grim backdrop, it is refreshing to see KCCA insulate itself from the crippling malaise. The club has put in place structures that engender seamless transitions while also uprooting careerists. Its top brass should be saluted and celebrated for providing a progressive milestone.
All in all, we must receive with enthusiasm and adulation two takeaways from KCCA’s landmark season.

These include the need to have an identity and the beauty of building structures as opposed to cult of personality.
Ugandan sport would do well to admit the hollowness in not adhering to both time-honoured approaches and lay it to rest.

Ugandan netball’s grassroots development deserves praise

Netball continues to burn itself into the consciousness of the ordinary Ugandan folk with the 2017 World Youth Cup offering the latest delectable purr. A top eight placement for the under-21 national team at the tournament coupled with the earlier capture of the African Netball Championship is telling. Telling in the sense that it is testament to how the sport ticks all the right boxes without fully achieving the emotional intensity and recognition the feats demand.
Ugandan netball sits oddly against other sports in the country.

This column was recently contemptuous of the Uganda Netball Federation for failing to extricate the sport from poverty’s embrace. Your columnist offers no apologies. What is not in dispute, though, is that much unlike other Ugandan sports, netball provides a space for incubating a semblance of success.
The She Pearls’s decent showing at the World Youth Cup in Botswana has continued to set netball apart from its Ugandan sport opposite numbers. The cavalier attitude to put the proverbial cart ahead of the horse tends to happen on such an unacceptable scale in this banana republic. Such an attitude is ingrained so deeply because Ugandan sports officials are always happy to pursue success at any cost. They don’t build from down working their way to the top.
As it turns out, residual guilt surfaces in the book of Ugandan netball officials.

There appears to be an appetite to make grassroots netball competitive. At least that is what the run to the World Youth Cup quarterfinals has emphatically showed.
Concerns about the median age of the She Cranes team that figured at the 2015 Netball World Cup were not unfounded.

The likes of Florence Amono, Alice Nanteza, Betty Namukasa and Harriet Apako were pretty much at the end of their tether. Apako, the Uspa netball player of the years 2004 and 2005, tragically passed on shortly after the tournament when she was afflicted by a water-borne disease.
Apako is sorely missed in Ugandan netball quarters, but were she still alive to date chances are that - just as is the case with her contemporaries - she would have been phased out of the She Cranes setup.
The pulse of netball in schools is vibrantly strong. This has made sketching beautiful portraits at age grade competitions like the World Youth Cup a possibility. The brushstrokes Ugandan netball chooses are far more broader than what others in this banana republic can muster. And for that this column salutes Uganda Netball Federation.

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