How late bloomer Magwali gave up firefighting to enjoy football

Under normal circumstances, Ronald Magwali was not meant to be a footballer. A lazy persona defined his junior career objecting to hard training and having to exchange football for firefighting while giving a shot at boxing, too. The 23-year-old is a jack of all trades who plays for the national beach soccer team yet his arrival at 16-time champions SC Villa came when he was playing football for the sake of it in the third-tier Regional League.

Magwali has one of the strangest career arcs of any player in the StarTimes Uganda Premier League. Orphaned at an early age, his very strict mother was never supportive. He actually never played for any school team until after Senior Six. Having started school at Nakivubo Blue P/S, he tried boxing at Kampala High and Kololo SS where he was a boxer.

“I had never thought about playing for a big club like Villa despite having passion for football since childhood because my mother wanted me to concentrate on studies,” Magwali said in an interview this week.

Magwali the fireman
After Senior Six, months after the passing of his mother, his elder sister Norah Nafuna, a secretary at the Fire Brigade in Kampala secured him a place at Fire Masters. During the 2013 season, coach Shafiq Bisaso had signed him at Gomba county team but his sister had different plans.

“She wanted me to get a job and her friend informed her of an opening at Fire Masters. I went the following morning thinking it was simply a job interview only to end there as a recruit for a nine-month course,” he says. He had agreed to join Gomba, prior to this fire engineering course. “It was a decent job paying me so well but my heart desired football,” the single father of one, who idolises a 2019 superhero film Avengers Endgame, says.

Life as a Jogoo
Playing as a midfielder, Magwali started at Nakivubo Boys, a Kampala Regional League side before joining arch-rivals KJT where he played with the likes of Alex Komakech, Eddie Kagimu and Bonny Baingana before he quit football to pursue his certificate in fire engineering.

His emergence at Villa has been barely credible as he got into Premier League football two seasons ago from Kabalagala Rangers.

Aged 23, he was deemed not physically strong enough. Yet he surmounted difficulties to join SC Villa and become the very embodiment of the old cliché; “Never Give Up.”

“When I joined Villa, it was really tough. I used to panic a lot. I was inexperienced because I never played Big League. But Emma Kalyowa helped me a lot to settle in,” he says.

His current reputation as a physical centre forward is a far cry from the player he was at Nakivubo Boys nine years ago. He was the smallest of the players and was rejected at Fire Masters for not having the desired physique. “First of all, it was all about me. I was so lazy and did not want hard work yet I was also big-headed,” Magwali, confesses.

But Simon Mugerwa, Douglas Bamweyana’s deputy, who had seen him train at Fire Masters invited him for trials at Villa Park in January 2019 where he impressed.

“I knew he had the talent but he needed more preparation for the big stage,” Mugerwa recalls.
Magwali repaid his coach’s faith when he scored four goals in nine games. But life was not a bed of roses for the forward.

After the first half season, he had to give up the number nine jersey after fans imposed high expectations comparing him with the late Majid Musisi.

“You really have to have balls to continue putting on that shirt when someone mentions the late Majid,” he said. He opted for shirt 13 as none of the other forwards; Bashir Mutanda and Faisal Muwawu, stepped up to ask for that jersey. It was unused the whole of last season.

But luck just kept playing tricks on him during the coronavirus truncated season. An injury during training after the opening day loss to Kyetume sidelined him for the whole of the first round and he only returned in the second round to score one league goal and two Uganda Cup goals to cap what he called a bad season.

“At a certain point you would think we would get the second place because we had a chance to play KCCA at Namboole. But the decision to end the season because of Covid-19 stopped all our team and personal goals,” he said.

Prior to the arrival at Villa Park, Magwali had impressed at Kabalagala Rangers where he was the top scorer with nine goals in 2017. But he was here as a solace, also playing in the Beach Soccer league. It was Villa that gave him a greenlight.

He is already feeling the pressure of expectations. He recalls fans throwing tantrums at him when he missed a sitter against Proline in February.

“The fans are very demanding and you have to be focused all the time to manage the pressure because to them even a draw is unacceptable,” he says adding that “I have learnt that hard work beats talent and definitely I am ready for the whatever comes my way,” he adds.

Life’s a beach
Like many top flight peers, Magwali has gone against his club’s wish not to play in the beach soccer competitions. His high point was the 2019 Copa Dar es Salaam silver medal where he is still hurting for missing a penalty that could have landed the team gold.

“I have to participate in beach soccer league games to keep my place on the national team,” the Muteesa I Roya University player, said. “Beach soccer is part-time and we play once a month. For the national team, the activities are during the breaks. So, it does not interfere at all,” he says.

Future
Although he has lived all his life in Nakivubo, giving back to children in Mbale is his ultimate dream.
His versatility and ability as a centre forward, false nine and winger make him an important player.
“To be honest, you can see that he has the determination and willingness to reach greater heights,” Edward Kaziba, the SC Villa coach, explains.

Magwali said he is thinking of playing in a foreign league before retiring into restaurant and or hardware business. “For now, I just want to stay focused and win something at SC Villa.”

PROFILE

MAGWALI AT A GLANCE
Name: Ronald Magwali
Date of birth: March 11, 1996
Place: Buwalasi, Sironko District
Parents: Juliet Nabududa and James Magomu (all dead)
Schools attended: Nakivubo Blue P/S, Kampala High & Kololo SS
Playing career
2011-2014: Nakivubo Boys
2014-2016: KJT
2015-2017: Kabalagala Rangers
January 2019-to-date: SC Villa
Honours
lMuwanguzi Cup (equivalent of Uganda Cup) with Stormers in 2015
lTop scorer (12 goals) with Sand Cranes in Copa Dar in 2017