Peerless Lekuru drives Black Pearls to women's title

The question at the beginning of the season was not if Black Pearls would win the Nile Special Women’s Championship, but how they would do it this time. They won it unbeaten last year.

The other question was not about who can stop Emily Lekuru but rather “Who will try to slow her down?”

Black Pearls completed those puzzles on Saturday after thrashing Uganda Cup winners Nile Rapids 58-11 to win this year’s championship unbeaten with Lekuru crossing the line seven times.

The win handed them the title with 54 points, nine ahead of Thunderbirds with one game to go.

Lekuru also finally had a chance to repay the Jinja side for denying her team a double with the shock Cup defeat earlier in the season.

The speedster, nicknamed ‘Ferrari’, was serving a suspension during that final after failing to honour a national call.

“Losing the Uganda Cup was a wake-up call for the players because they had become complacent and then the suspension of Emily [Lekuru] affected us,” Black Pearls winning coach Hellen Buteme told Daily Monitor.

“We went back to the drawing board and set a target to not only win every game but win with a bonus point and I’m very proud of the girls because we achieved it,” she adds.

Chasing herself

Lekuru has been in a class of her own scoring a whopping 64 tries and scoring 320 points along Pearls’ path to glory. The Ferrari is now setting her eyes on scoring six tries in their final match against Ewes to hit the 70-try and 350-point marks this season.

Her count is already more than the aggregate of the other top five try and point scorers. Her teammates Charlotte Mudoola and Mary Nakato have collected 100 and 55 points respectively while Christine Akello (Avengers) has 60 to her name.

In tries scored, Akello and Nakato followed with 12 and 11 respectively.

Nile Special Women's Premier League 

Weekend results

Black Pearls 58-11 Nile Rapids

Ewes 11-42 Thunderbirds