Kenya vs Uganda. A fans view

The scores last week did not reflect the game. The scores at half time should have read 28-3 to Ug setting a perfect platform to kill the game in the second half. They should kick themselves in the gut for knocking on and losing momentum when it mattered. Their forwards were well drilled and carried their weight effortlessly around the park while breaking the gain line at will. Their rucks were, secure, quick and effective, their back three solid dangerous and safe. The only undoing was a clueless flyhalf having his nails done, and could fire up his back into action, leaving his scrumhalf with no outlet from the good quick going forward ball from rucks apart from back to the forwards. This slowly grinded the energy out of the forwards as the game grew on.



SCRUM. Except for the pushover try and the cheap penalties conceded on early engagement and binding infringements, the Ug scrimmaging was much more solid on the take, drive and wheel. Their ball was clean and ours shaky.

LINEOUTS. Although both sides managed to retain the lion share of their own throws with us plucking a few steals here and there. The Ug lineout took it for the simple reason of having more variations as compared to our static patterns. Lineout training should be the most simple but time consuming drills. All you need is a thrower and jumpers and calls. The animal comes in perfection of the all the simple motions into liquid flawless timing of the action, through repetitive throws, jumps and lifts.

MAUL. This was hardly used by both sides. Showing a general lack of confidence and or training in this aspect of the game. This is the perfect platform for a well drilled pack to score easy tries or to draw in defenders in the opponents 22 to create spaces for backs to exploit. It however can only be effective through accurate touch finding play, which in both cases was not the case.

RUCKS. We lost the battle and we lost it clean. More often than acceptable we were isolated on the contact point, went down to quickly or stayed up too long. The Ug side has always been more skilled in their application of rucks. They hit the gap and always dictate the terms on how they go down, leading to a well presented ball. What do we need to do, to drill it into our players that it pays more to take the gap than to try and knock over the opponent at the expense of control denying the luxury of the options of clean rucks and offloads? Maybe it is ingrained on them in the formative years of their playing careers and its imperative then that it is at these levels where work needs to be done.

TERRITORY/POSITIONAL PLAY. Our kicks for touch were not tactical. They never seemed aimed for touch, if you are not aiming for touch it is imperative that you have a well planned advance chasing line to close in on the back three, and equally mobile cover on the gaps left by these chasers. This chasing and cover cannot be left to player’s instinct. It has to be practiced over and over, and not only by the chaser but also by the covering players. The whole team has know where the high ball will be placed so to appreciate the gaps chasers leave and cover them as they advance without leaving gaps. Our high balls to the Ug number 8 were frightening; he always made 50m returns with ball, what was frightening was that this 50m were not lateral runs but straight ones towards the try box. If only his support was with him, the outcome would have been to their favour. Another frightening fact was that our kickers always seemed to kick it to him knowing well that his running return was devastating.

RUNNING LINES/DEFENSE. We were too shallow, we did not take the ball at pace. Our centers lines were too lateral. Our wingers did not attempt to beat their men on the outside. They lack genuine blistering pace. With all this going against us it was interesting that the Ug backs were only interested in defence, which to their credit was rock solid, their organized drifting was a joy to watch, their coaches are doing an excellent job on defensive patterns, that is showing. Maybe we need a Ugandan defence coach to help our clueless team organize their defense, it’s an open secret they have no ideas further than just selecting a good tackler into the team. The Ug line attacking strategy was left at home, or not cleared at the border. Did they have a prop playing at flyhalf? That guy’s only appearance was when he was missing penalty conversions. Our fly half was brilliant; his line breaks excellent, our first centre and wingers were however, either not intelligent or fast enough to even just but once be on his shoulders for the offload on the thousands of times he broke the line. Without proper attacking patterns, we will always rely on individual talent to score tries. That’s why our coaches had to bring in sevens players who have never trained with the team. “Short Cuts!”

PLAYER SELECTION AND ASSESSMENT. Our technical team is the saddest bunches of know it all, incompetent, blundering, boring clowns. How could the issue of Kiptoo being unfit only get realized in Zimbabwe? They had the whole season, Bamburi super series, National team selection training break and pre tournament test matches to check, monitor and maintain player fitness and conditioning. You cannot drop a player that you have been working on and monitoring for 3 months, mid tournament because he is unfit. You do not need a degree in rocket science to identify that someone is unfit and that they cannot be effective. And to think we have a fitness and conditioning expert!! Do we have basic minimum fitness and conditioning levels for all player positions and are this continuously monitored? You cannot intensively work with a healthy uninjured player for three months and only discover after game day that his levels of unfitness could not warrant his selection. That’s a big stale joke and if it were up to me, it would be a valid reason for summary dismissal and public flogging of the entire technical team. They are lucky it’s not up to me. But they sure need to be sent to loliondo to drink some of that stuff to cure their deficiencies.


Will we win in Uganda? Only by a miracle, because Ug must have probably realized by know that in the game, backs are allowed to run forward with the ball, and they are not there just to defend. If this has still not sunk into the minds of their coaches, then only God can help them.

Man of match. How we got this wrong again, I don’t know? The Ug number 8 was the best player on the park, and thats by good 2 miles.