Covid-19 & Kirunda: Sport loses its heart, soul

It’s not just private motorists in Uganda that had something to cheer about this past week after firing up engines of their cars for the first time in several weeks. Sports federation heads also heaved a sigh of relief having found themselves at the vortex of the coronavirus shutdown since March 18. The end is not yet in sight, but at least latest developments should keep sports honchos resolutely positive during this enforced break.

A few weeks ago, President Museveni made it clear that the attendant effects of the pandemic will continue to retain a dark grip on the sports sub-sector. Likening sport to a pastime, Museveni said he would only take the sub-sector safely out of lockdown restrictions if and when the pandemic is kept in check. While this position has not technically changed, the request by National Council of Sports for federations to furnish it with their pandemic standard operating procedures (SOPs) hints at a possible change of tack – sport learning to live with the seemingly endemic virus.
The new-found interest in SOPs is tantamount to doing roughly the opposite of the line Museveni toed when he concluded so comprehensively and divisively that sports can wait. The conversation about how sport should emerge out of the lockdown is by all means healthy. Safety is unsurprisingly a vital plank of any attempt to resume sporting activities. Given the difficulties around maintaining physical distance in sporting events, the framework stakeholders bring to the thinking will have to be innovative.

This column has been unequivocal in stating that flexible thinking is key to balancing the competing demands of safety and the return of sport. No option should be taken off the table on account of being supposedly logistically impossible. We should also be prepared for the eventuality that sport might emerge from the response to coronavirus with significant tweaks here and there.
The International Cricket Council is, for instance, contemplating outlawing use of salvia to shine the ball during the Covid-19 pandemic. Spit-polishing though is linked to swing bowling. It can be argued that denying swing bowlers the chance to produce movement through the air makes the contest between bat and ball asymmetrical.
Elsewhere, World Rugby is toying with the idea of removing reset scrums and eliminating upright tackles, among others, just so the handegg sport ticks the safety box.
Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson played without caddies in a $10m charity golf match the other day. The pandemic is primed to take a piece of sport with it.

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Ugandan football must feel like a sizeable piece of itself is missing following the passing of Jimmy Kirunda this past week. Kirunda was rightly eulogised as an unassuming and great servant of Ugandan football. He was a goal-scoring defender par excellence. The goals he scored were never overshadowed by the ones that got away. In 1977, with what proved to be the last roll of the dice, he scored the goal that took Uganda to the 1978 Africa Cup of Nations (Afcon) finals.
What transpired at the tournament will never be lost to the fog of history. Uganda came within a whisker of winning the title having started out as rank outsiders. This would be Kirunda’s last Afcon finals. It was also the third that he was leading Uganda out as captain after earlier campaigns in 1974 and 1976.
Which emergency striker scores 32 goals in 28 league games? Kirunda did just that for KCCA in 1978. Yet until a steady stream of eulogies took centre-stage last week, the Ugandan Kaiser had well and truly become a mere footnote in history. The state and manner in which he died is a stark reminder of the fate that befalls ex-internationals in banana republics. Such was his financial predicament that he reportedly couldn’t clear a medical bill of under Shs2 million in recent times. What a big shame!

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