Weekly Ramble

An interesting article in todays Nation caught my eye. Teachers' Colleges are playing rugby and competitively? Apparently there are more people playing rugby than we think. Is all this done under the auspices of the Kenya Rugby Football Union? I wonder. Not my point anyway. With this vast number of "people" playing rugby in this country, I also wonder if there is any monitoring done on just what is being played.

What am I talking about? My question boils round standards. Do we have any expectations of our rugby players? What is the bare minimum they must be able to do? With so many people playing rugby all over the place, is it structured rugby or akin to what we used to call "British Bulldog". Not to deride the game, some of us learned our evasive skills playing that game, the point being organisation. Do we just let anyone pick up a rugby ball and play or do we ensure he has someone to show him how to play? Rugby being a contact sport, it is important that the "players" learn the correct way to take/make contact with least risk of injury to both parties. Is this being done? What about officiating? Do we have enough referees. In one of my posts I talk about the level of officiating in this country. We barely have competent officials at club level, what do we have for those ad hoc games? A painful thought. I have never gone this route, but what about coaches. Do all these teams have coaches? Are all of them qualified? Can all of them be measured against some criteria to declare them "competent"? Once the coaches are competent, are the producing competent players? Who is a competent player?

My concern here is that we are not producing the right quality of player at the right time. Players make it to the National Teams totally bereft of skill. National Coaches have been reduced to talent scouts and then development coaches. In other countries, coaches are called managers. Primarily because they manage the resource at their disposal. This may be coaches, physiotherapists, doctors, nutritionists, logistic persons, etc. in order to produce the best possible team. That is a far cry from what our coaches do. Then the behaviour of the players further turns the coaches into selectors. What do I mean by this? Squads are called well in advance to start training for assignments. Players don't bother to turn up. Once they make the squad, their next challenge is to make the match day team. They don't intend to do this by working hard at all training sessions and following the instructions of the coach. They intend to do this by attending just enough sessions to be "selected". Thus sessions far from the game have low player turnout, those closest to the game have the biggest turnouts. What is the "coach" to do then? He is only left with coming up with a workable combination for the game based on who is available.

As a parting shot, no Kenyan Club can be beaten by a Ugandan Club, but our National team seems to be struggling by the day. We cannot rely on "playing at home" to win matches. We must be able to produce match winning performances irrespective of the venue!