Will the real Edward Rombo please stand up.

We know you are only a few months into your job as director of 15’s but we are yet to see your input.
The last two weekends have been a revelation of how out of depth we are in 15’s rugby.
Sadly this was reflected both on and off the pitch. How can you host an international fixture and not have ball boys and sufficient balls to go round. Even more criminal was the lack of a sound system to play the national anthems before the game.
Do you know how much was collected at the gate? How does the union intends to spend this money?
We hope such shambolic off pitch preparations for international fixtures are not the inputs you have in store for us going forward.
A word of advice, please source for the Ugandan national anthem on C.D while on the away leg of the Elgon Cup and ensure that a sound system will be in place to play the pre-tested C.D
Or better still; get singer to give a good rendition of the anthems, backed up by the said C.D as is the trend in most other international rugby fixtures. Also a few balls can be borrowed from clubs and arrangements for sufficient ball boys to be available for the game made before hand.
But knowing the union this would be a good excuse for a union official to fly KQ to Uganda for a couple days in the “quest” of the said C.D

Team/player preparations for our international fixtures have been more shambolic, I believe. How can we only spend one or two weeks in preparation for fixtures that were known six months ago and try shift blame to the technical bench and the players for a disjointed showing? That is plain inane. Unconfirmed reports have it that Uganda have been in preparations for the last couple of months as a unit. I have no idea why we spend millions and waste a whole lot of time in a carnival exercise of selecting players that last longer than their training, when at the start of it all the top 30 players were known to all give and take one or two new faces.

Our best 30 or so players were known by January Mr Rombo. Their faces, composition, form or skills did change by much in the entire two months that was spent in their selection (BRSS) even next year after another selections we will still have the same faces give or take an inclusion/omission or two. Give the coaches this time instead to develop their skills and playing patterns as a unit. If BRSS has to go on for its money minting reasons then please have the national team then play as a franchise as it is a platform where they can get coaching since we have no funds otherwise.
These top players should be contracted and put in training programs that run the whole year. This was not done and the results are clear to all.
These are not a bunch of professionals who are involved in game every day and can be expected to gel as a unit after one or two sessions.

Mr Rombo, a bunch of guys with great potential stagnate throughout the year and are expected to play rugby against Mpumalanga after 3 or 4 sessions of training as a team. You can only gain experience from such fixtures if you prepare solidly for them(What a joke and waste of tickets)
How Zimbabwe a country on its death knees stricken by a financial meltdown, and ravaged by disease outbreaks, coupled by mass desertion of its people can still raise a team that runs down Kenya and loses narrowly is a mystery.
Uganda with its immensely shallow player base and even leaner union financial muscle, has managed to spend the little they have prudently and are consistently come up with better drilled and committed sides than ours, and has even attracted Kenyan players to switch nationality.

Mr Rombo, come 3rd of July, Uganda will focus their game to massacre us in the lineouts and in forward open play, their backs will receive very clean and fast balls from a great platforms set by their forwards. If their backs get it right this time they should win. The backs will also employ a well drilled drift defense and come out with a set of attacking and not defensive backs. They will clean out, theirs and our rucks.
They are not afraid to shout to world on how they intend play on the day, because their coaches have always had a consistent playing pattern which they have tirelessly worked on.
We know this, you know this and they know this. The question is what you will do about it. We have no game plan and rely on individual brilliance in a team sport! We pride ourselves with our backs and yet they are yet to display any simple or complex moves that have been calculated and worked on.
Zimbabwe had calculated backline moves and sliced us open at will. Our only move was Nato back in to Simiyu which was read and snuffed out with relative ease. You cannot have a backline move that only involves two players!!! And insist on it for 80minutes? Rombo????
Is it the coaching? Though i think they are clueless i cannot nail it on them this time. They have the perfect excuse. What are they expected to achieve in the time and with the resources availed to them. (3-4 training sessions!!!!) If we win this tri nation thing, it will be an outcome of pure chance and luck as opposed to hard work, commitment and technical acuity.

Mr Rombo i expect that you will come up with a respected competent and representative technical review panel that will monitor, advice, report on and review: the, training, selection, preparation of the team and all matches and results of the team and bench in a methodical manner. Such a panel should start work immediately to review our performance on a game by game basis in preparation for next year’s international fixtures.

Mr Rombo you cannot buy text books for only a select few of your children and expect them all to perform in the same manner. If the 15s team and bench cannot get contracts like their 7s brothers are getting you will be letting down the sport and the blame will lay squarely on your office. If you think you cannot guarantee this please step down and allow someone else to do this as it is the only way we can guarantee the commitment of our players towards training and making the personal sacrifices required. Match allowances that are only sufficient for a couple of drinks defeat their purpose and intent.
If the divide in compensation and attention between the two codes continues to increase, I foresee a situation where all forwards will all attempt to loose their core pack playing competitiveness in pursuit of the benefits that accrue to playing sevens.
I know a stupid response from the union could be to decrease or stagnate benefits to the 7’s side, instead of doing the hard work of looking for funding for 15’s to bridge the gap. 15’s needs funding now. Its your work to get it, where from? We don’t care. Just do it.

Mr Rombo, I have no idea why you sent a union sponsored cameraman to Arusha instead of, to Kampala for the Zim Vs Ug game or better yet two of them to both venues, another obvious case of wrapped priorities, and that’s if any exist in the first place.

All in all I hope that you will be as ambitious, dedicated, passionate and calculating as you were in your days as a player, when carrying out your responsibilities as director of 15’s. Your legacy is, as is always, a work in progress till death. Fortunately or unfortunately the human memory is conditioned to remember failures more than it does achievement. Don’t soil and destroy the good you have accumulated so far by leading Kenya 15’s Rugby into its greatest error “pun intended “of disorganization and mediocrity with you at the helm.

If the results and happens of the past few weeks are a reflection of your leadership, God help us all. If not, get the eff into your office and effing start working

THE BUCK STOPS WITH YOU ALONE MR ROMBO, AND NO WHERE ELSE.