Local women sport does deserve better

What you need to know:

  • Unfortunate. Last week, the Uganda Lady Sevens, who beat the odds to qualify for the 2009 Rugby World Cup Sevens, put out an SOS to raise under Shs1m for transport refund and medical supplies.

Women sport in Uganda getting the short end of the stick is nothing new, but Fufa’s recent treatment of the Crested Cranes is a classic of the genre.
Hushed tones have start to call out the tokenism that saw the team figure in the 2018 Africa Women Cup of Nations qualifiers. Although they did not state it in no uncertain terms, actions suggested that Fufa was so grotesquely dismissive of the Crested Cranes’ chances.
The decision to have the team travel to and fro the Ugandan and Kenyan capitals by road only served to underline Fufa’s apathy. It showed that the football governing body was driven not by a desire for domination but an absurd need to get done with something ritualistic. It was as if Fufa wanted to Crested Cranes to exit the qualifiers at the soonest.

Road trips
Reduced to their basest level, Crested Cranes players led by their effervescent captain Hasifah Nassuna fought gallantly en route to losing against Kenya by the odd goal. It’s not a stretch to conclude that the team’s success at qualification was limited by two back-numbing road trips. This fact cannot be understated especially since Kenya managed to fly its players in for the return leg.
Above all, it must leave a nauseating taste in the mouths of women football fans that while the Crested Cranes players were subjected to a brutal road trip, their male counterparts were flown in for trial games against Malawi as well as São Tomé and Príncipe. Heck, even the national under-17 side was also flown to Burundi to feature in the on-going Cecafa Under-17 Youth Championship! What all these episodes unsettlingly show is an inherent sexism in Ugandan sport that needs to be nipped in the bud sooner rather than later.

Begging sprees
Not so long ago, She Cranes players, grimly determined to play at the fourteenth staging of the Netball World Cup, found themselves washing cars in a fundraising drive that was tailored to help them make the trip to Sydney, Australia. That was back in 2015. But if you thought the episode was an embarrassing relic from the past, think again. Last week, the Uganda Lady Sevens, who beat the odds to qualify for the 2009 Rugby World Cup Sevens, put out an SOS to raise under Shs1m for transport refund and medical supplies. Yes, they are that desperate!
Elsewhere, the Lady Cricket Cranes, who gave a masterclass while landing the African Twenty20 title last year, have embarked on a begging spree of their own. The team intends to raise funds that will help facilitate training and allowances for the selected side that travels to Zimbabwe to play half a dozen T20 matches.
The matches are supposed to help the Lady Cricket Cranes tune up for the ICC Women’s T20 Qualifier due in the Netherlands in July. Surely, Uganda’s female athletes deserve much better than the travesty they are grappling with.

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Why UPL refs have their work cut out

Something extraordinary is happening in the Uganda Premier League this season. And, no, it’s not down to the fact that the title race bares all the hallmarks of one that will go down to the wire. We experienced something remotely similar when KCCA beat a richly assembled Victoria University outfit by the slimmest of margins - one point to be exact - during the 2013/14 season. That something extraordinary isn’t also down to the fact that a three-horse race is illuminating the home straight. For one, a nail-biter of a grandstand finish played out during the 2015/16 season when the top three sides (KCCA, Vipers SC and Express - in that order) were separated by a whole of four points.
So if photo-finishes are not compelling enough for us to longingly gaze after, what is? I’ll tell you what is: the fact that a great many fans are intensely following events. Put bluntly, the margin of error from officials couldn’t be narrower. Any whiff of a refereeing mistake will be seen as much more than just a statistical rounding error. It will in fact evoke a poisonous rancour that will undoubtedly do lasting damage to Ugandan club football. The question, therefore, is: are Ugandan referees competent to carry out a job mercifully free of controversies? Based on the contours of refereeing performances in three recent matches (SC Villa v Masavu, Vipers v Bright Stars and KCCA v Mbarara City), the quick conclusion is that the optics don’t look good. The uncomfortable contradictions that are beginning to emerge point to a title run-in set to come trailing bitter arguments. It is reminiscent of the 2003 debacle when a neck and neck jostle between Villa and Express ended up spewing uncomfortable truths. Residual guilt surfaced after Villa beat Akol 22-1 to put paid any chance of Express stealing the league title on goal difference. In the aftermath of that result, Ugandan club football reeled under the weight of a referees’ match-fixing racket aptly christened ‘Arrow Group.’ So, could lightning striker twice?

Collective conscience
As far as moments of truth go, Uganda’s elite referees face their greatest. The referees will be keen not to leave a stain on their collective conscience. It won’t be an absurdly easy task given that - even by their low standards - performances of the referees have dropped off precipitously this season. So much so that two of them - Titus Opio and Ben Adrole - have been sent on gardening leave. Others have gotten away with slaps on the wrist when something sterner would have done fine. Little wonder, livid voices are not in scant supply. One Uganda Premier League coach, whose team is trying to beat the drop, told this column that refereeing in the Ugandan topflight is a train wreck waiting to happen. Refereeing, he added, remains the great fault line of Ugandan club football.
This season’s relegation battle has become a subplot as much as a brooding lament for Express FC fans. The Red Army is not accustomed to it, but the hard-wired inclination of their team has been to grind and fiddle. Other relegation-threatened teams grappling with nerve-betraying moments of their own have pleaded for fairness amidst talk that Express will get preferential treatment.
This extraordinary season has in equal parts scripted a baffling and promising turn of events at either end of the table. Promising because either run-in has the potential to go down to wire. Baffling because a smidgen of doubt about referees’ performances still creeps in. It will always do!

What we now know....

We know that Asuman Mugerwa will captain Uganda’s XVs side during the forthcoming Rugby Afrique Gold Cup. The tournament will double as a qualifier for the 2019 Rugby World Cup.
We also know that Mugerwa (pic) takes over the captaincy from fellow prop Brian Odongo whose troublesome knee has left him in the treatment room.
Odongo has served diligently as Rugby Cranes skipper for a protracted period and will no doubt be a tough act to follow. That we know for sure!