Senkatuka: A tale of spells

Ssenkatuka has started the season in superb fashion. PHOTO BY JB SSENKUBUGE

Charles Dickens’s quintessential “it was the best of times, it was the worst of times” line seems strangely appropriate to Bright Stars captain Nelson Senkatuka. The spring of hope and winter of despair A Tale of Two Cities references tells the striker’s football career in a way that few could.
That Senkatuka’s career is split into a binary with two distinct tales — decent club and lukewarm international spells — is not in doubt.
In fact, the false starts the twenty-something striker has had in a Cranes jersey have deeply scarred him than he cares to admit.

Their usual pattern, so unrelentingly grim, has with time become the rule rather than the exception.
Those close to Senkatuka say the familiarity has not quite translated into contemptuousness. He never tires second-guessing the sheer number of snubs that threaten to be a preserve of sorts.
His admirers also equally cannot wrap their heads around the fact that purple patches in the topflight league and Cranes trial matches don’t quite beget international caps.
Although he doesn’t have the gasp-worthy technical audacity that his admirers allude to, Senkatuka runs the channels brilliantly.

He also has a decent goals-per-game ratio. Ian Mutenda, the director of football at Bright Stars, holds that Senkatuka keeps running into a brick wall at the international stage because “in Uganda we choose ‘work rate’ before goals.”

Kasule’s view
Mujib Kasule, who profited from Senkatuka’s goal scoring prowess last season as the latter plundered eleven goals in twenty-five league games for Proline, draws on another binary when assessing the striker.
Kasule agrees that Senkatuka has none of his contemporaries’ love of disruption, only his insistence on scoring goals.

Kasule however adds, in a thinly veiled note of derision, that the striker can be so rigid to the point of shutting out hard truths that would provide a great learning curve.
The preference to work with coaches who wax lyrical about him and not those that offer tough love has proven counter-productive for Senkatuka.

For one, it has halted him from becoming a rounded striker. Playing with his back facing the goal is often times a big ask.

This together with the near completeness of other striking options has torpedoed Senkatuka’s chances of figuring at the big time.

The Bright Stars captain has started the current Uganda Premier League season like a house on fire, scoring four times in seven starts.

But so have his other direct rivals who are equally keen on making the 2018 African Nations Championship (Chan) squad. Caesar Okhuti, Daniel Serunkuma and Milton Karisa had by the time of writing this piece scored three league goals apiece.
Derrick Nsibambi, while not as prolific this season, has tucked piles of experience under his belt, which should make him Uganda’s spearhead in Morocco.

If the assessment of many Ugandan football high priests is correct, the forthcoming Cecafa Senior Challenge Cup in Kenya will play the role of king maker.

Senkatuka seems to have a very fair shot at making the trip to Kenya.
Whether he outshines his direct rivals (it’s worth remembering that Kenya is a happy hunting ground for Dan Serunkuma) rests on a cornerstone on conjecture.
Indeed for Senkatuka, it could – in truly Dickensian speak -- be the best of times; it could be the worst of times.

Why Adrian Kasito merits the plaudits

It is undoubtedly a good time to be Philip Wokorach. Barring a disaster of epic proportions, the 23-year-old will go down in history as the player who shaped the course of Ugandan rugby sevens. If this sounds like there is a weight of expectation on his shoulder pads, then it is because Wokorach is a composite of Ugandan rugby sevens’ present and future.
The annals will reflect that 2017 was the year gave Ugandan sevens rugby its existential plausibility.

Before, rugby sevens, a variant of rugby union where teams of seven players apiece split 14 minutes across two halves, was frustratingly vague in Uganda. Many looked upon it with grave suspicion. Some still do.
Ugandan rugby sevens has sidestepped its way to the mainstream while still sounding the alarm over poor financials.

There have been a few bumps along the rutted track. Disappearances of players while on international duty in Scotland and Germany was for one hardly what the doctor ordered. Beauty has nonetheless emerged from the rubble. Next year, Uganda will play at the Rugby World Cup Sevens in the US city and county of San Francisco.
Wokorach will be the face of the team that will look to sizzle on the pitch as much as not fashion any disappearing acts off it.

A bit (some would deem this an understatement) of a ball hog, Wokorach is never desperately showy. One of the noteworthy things he has done — bar breaking ankles of adversaries with his sidesteps — is keep his feet on the ground. The trappings of fame have not dimmed the 23-year-old’s modesty. Little wonder, he is held up as the perfect role model for up and coming Ugandan rugby players.
But if Wokorach has showed how best to deal with fame and stardom, Adrian Kasito has showed how to react when the buzz subsides.

It feels like yesterday when Kasito got a dial on the posts as Crocs landed the Protector Rugby Super Series (whatever happened to that championship!) title. Adrian Bukenya might have been a little generous in his description when he said -- at the time -- that “Kasito is the best thing that’s happened to Ugandan rugby.” The embellishment notwithstanding, the statement showed the upward trajectory of Kasito’s career. Yet he would go on to become a bit-part player with his club, Betway Kobs.
Although Kasito recently told your columnist that he is well pleased with the game time he gets at club level, there have been good reasons for the intense young player to feel disillusioned. The budding scrum-half did a good job masking the disillusionment during an interview your columnist, but he did admit to “forgetting how to kick [for points]” after having played second fiddle to Davis Kiwalyabye for eternity. Yet not at one point did his head drop.
Kasito kept playing in a style noticeably more aggressive than that of people with a similar body shape (he is quite tiny for a rugby player). Tolbert Onyango liked what he was seeing so much so that he took Kasito into the Ugandan rugby sevens’ fold. Kasito rewarded the faith that Onyango has in him by scoring the last-gasp try that recently secured Uganda the Rugby Africa Sevens title on home soil.
Last weekend, Kasito also scored the try that helped Kobs procure a come-from-behind Uganda Cup win against Rhinos. If Wokorach has responded well to his shiny moments, Kasito should also be commended for bravely taking one on the chin.

@robertmadoi