Ex-Cranes star Tabula’s interesting television interview
A Career Of Little Reward. On return from Sweden where he played for GIF Sundsvall, Tabula (L) signed for academy side Proline to offer leadership and later wound up his playing career at Mwerwere -based Bright Stars. PHOTO BY EDDIE CHICCO
Early this week former Uganda Cranes defender Abubaker Tabula was on television talking about his eventful professional football journey.
It could have been a movie script and it all started when Rwanda’s APR spotted him at the 2005 Cecafa Challenge Cup held in Kigali.
Apparently, they were so impressed they decided they would pinch him from the then KCC FC (now KCCA) at all costs.
Sometime that year APR sent a Rwandese army vehicle across the border and to Masaka to pick Tabula, who had made it from Kampala in the dead of the night unbeknownst to his employers.
At this point Tabula leaves all of us to our speculation as he doesn’t make it clear if there was a transfer certificate, license release, contract or why the whole transaction had to be executed at night.
Maybe the Rwandan League was kicking off at 5am the next morning!
Fast forward to 2007 and in a classic case of déjà vu, Tabula is spotted playing for his new employers’ APR, this time by a Swedish national employed by the Rwandese national team. So convinced is the Swede that Tabula’s potential is wasting away in a backwater league that he decides to smuggle him to Sweden for professional trials at GIF Sundsvall.
So sometime that year while on duty for the Cranes, Tabula is instructed to collect his ticket to Stockholm at KLM’s Kampala office unbeknownst to his employers. By this point it is clear there is no transfer certificate, license release, contract and that the Swede was an ‘agent’ masquerading as an employee of the Rwandan National Team. But maybe he was a rare breed of the philanthropist football agent on a personal mission to rescue lost talent.
This entire tale is delivered matter-of-factly like it’s the most natural way to execute employment contracts. And it’s a story being told by one of Uganda’s best-known ‘professionals’ to a host who is clearly still star-struck and keen to remind his guest that as a boy, he once inscribed Abubaker to his football jersey.
It is also a story from 15 years ago when it was probably okay to get away from the local league, whatever the costs or circumstances.
But it doesn’t have to be that way today. Tabula returned to Ugandan football in 2010 to sign for Proline where he spent three years and then Bright Stars for a year.
He is currently with Kiira Young FC whom he joined in 2015.
At 39, he is clearly in the evening of his career. He isn’t the poorest of Ugandans so he can’t be looking to earn a living from football.
Football must be like a hobby to him now as there must be little left in it for him to prove to self or adoring fans.
And even if it isn’t evident as a trait he can be accused of in his past, I hope he respects the contracts he signs these days.
That is an example he must show to those he hopes to inspire.
