Keeping up with the coronavirus disruptions of the last six months

Author, Mr Moses Banturaki. PHOTO/FILE.

What you need to know:

The Cranes home games suspend our petty differences and are what we dream of, but certainly not like this. Maybe the games will be moved to Lugogo or Kitende because I am sure that makeshift hospital will not have discharged its last patient within seven weeks. 

Beneath the stands of Namboole stadium where press conferences are ordinarily held, hospital beds now line up in neat rows to form a makeshift Covid-19 hospital. It has been six months since the Coronavirus crisis ignited and if it hadn’t occurred to fans that it would dislocate even football, now it has. Especially in a month like September.

September has been special to Ugandan football fans because it was when we secured qualification over the last two Afcon editions. And had it not been for this coronavirus crisis the last game for the current campaign would have concluded last week on 8th September. 
All indications were that we would by now be going over what our third straight qualification would mean in terms of exposure and economic opportunity. Instead images of hospital beds and an over-grown turf stare right back at us from Namboole and have us thinking about how games we can’t go to will be played.

Caf, in all fairness, is looking forward and has communicated a re-start schedule. Our double header with South Sudan cut off on the very weekend we shut down in March, will now take place on 9th and 17th November and will be followed on March 22 next year with Burkina Faso in Kampala and Malawi away, a week later. Hopefully, we can take care of business having already avoided defeat in what on paper was our hardest away game against Burkina Faso, a fit that secured our perch on top of group B.

The last time we were top of the group after match day two we went on to qualify. That gives us hope. But it shouldn’t make us arrogant as we also possess a long history of good starts and poor finishes. 
There were times we always fell short at the last hurdle, an agonizing route we embraced for three decades and one that threatened to tie us down forever. Then we turned that corner in 2017 and followed through in 2019 and are favourites for 2022. Three straight qualifications. Except it wasn’t quite the way we had dreamed it.

The heavy criticism for how careless or indifferent we have become since the lifting of the lock down in June, means fans certainly shall not be allowed into football games anytime soon. And that is sad for any football fan but this being the Cranes, it feels even worse. Every national team is defined by its supporters but that’s especially true for a nation whose national team unites people like nothing else.

The Cranes home games suspend our petty differences and are what we dream of, but certainly not like this. Maybe the games will be moved to Lugogo or Kitende because I am sure that makeshift hospital will not have discharged its last patient within seven weeks. I also don’t see how boda-bodas will be allowed to ferry painted fans and their vuvuzelas if their movement and capacity are already limited. It can never be the same without the crowds, the hawking of dodgy replica jerseys, trinkets, drinks, food, the festive mood or without Namboole itself. Remember Namboole is the graveyard for visiting teams. At Lugogo or Kitende, on astro-turf, who knows? 

Our only solace is that the universality of the crisis neuters any advantages our opponents may seek to exploit. And the spine of our starting XI, if we can get them here from their abroad bases, has been active and on form. This should at the very minimum take care of South Sudan and Burkina Faso in Kampala and turns things out the way we all expect.