Weekly Ramble

Some days ago I wrote a post entitled "Building Rugby in Kenya" where I touched on rugby development in the country. It seems KRFU are on the ball on this one and recently introduced an Under 14's league where there are four teams participating. Apparently, the gentleman running the mini rugby, Eric Situma has convinced some clubs to take up his charges and host them as part of them. Impala seems to have taken up two sides, KCB one and he retains one side.

Whilst a noble idea, I still wonder what targets there are for this league. At this level, great emphasis should be laid on technique and learning to do things the proper way. "Lazy" habits of players need to be kicked out at this early stage and all basics should be sorted out. Let me not say too much before I watch any of the matches, but I have watched the mini-rugby sessions on Sundays and I do not see this happening. I also have a concern as to what support the Union will give the clubs that take up this challenge.

The IRB is particularly keen on promoting two levels of sport worldwide. This is age-grade rugby and women's rugby. This is where the IRB is spending at the moment. Women's rugby has been around for sometime. Only two clubs had taken up the challenge, Mwamba and Quins and this without union support. The Quins ladies quickly faded out and linked up with the Mwamba ones. Now Nondies also seem to have taken this up. What's my point? Self supporting clubs have their hands full at the moment with their players in the two leagues. Their resources are also spread thin and spending either time or money on either age grade rugby or women's rugby without any incentive or support from without. Why then would clubs take up this added burden? In a past draft strategic plan for the union, the technical working committee recommended incentives be given to clubs who run such programmes. We are quickly becoming like the government, the 2006-2011 strategic plan is yet to see the light of day!!

Two months past the Annual General Meeting, I still do not think the board have met. The last KRFU strategic plan expired in 2005 and the 2006-2011 plan, though debated quite thoroughly was never adopted nor anything done about it. What then are our directors doing?