The curtains closed on this year’s Safari Sevens with Samurai International emerging victorious to clinch the main cup trophy over Shujaa with 21-14 win.
This is the second time in the last three outings they have defeated our national sevens team at the finals.
Our second string team, Morans, finished third after a 12-5 win over Spain.
We now start preparations for the Dubai leg of the World Rugby Sevens Series in less than three weeks and my guess from what I saw at the weekend is we are in for an embarrassing outing in Dubai unless Paul Murunga can turn water into wine in the short time remaining.
We were not convincing when we faced good opposition and the same mistakes that crippled us in the Africa sevens championship in North Africa were evident especially against Samurai.
We lacked cohesion and it was like everyone had been given a different script on how to play.
The individual brilliance is there but rugby being a team sport, we need to play as a unit rather than individuals.
Our physicality is also weak especially on one-on-one tackles and in effecting turnovers especially in rucks.
I understand that the team is quite raw and this might just be a storm in a tea cup in the long run.
I have also been advocating for new blood and ideas in the sevens team, so I guess I can’t have my cake and eat it but we might still need some old heads to guide the young team in the big stage.
KRU chairman Richard Omwela and the board must really pull up their socks…that is if they actually have any.
How can a tournament that has been running for two decades now still be inviting minnow teams to grace the event yet the ambitions is to make the event part of HSBC 7s circuit.
Kenya had four teams in this year’s tournament but we even sank lower by inviting an emerging Uganda Cranes side in addition to the Cranes themselves.
If this doesn’t make your blood boil then nothing will. This is total lack of ambition for a union that always has a whole year to prepare for an event of this importance.
Nostalgically, I remember that we have managed to bring Samoa, France and even Argentina to previous Safari Sevens, why can’t we ride on that goodwill in the subsequent years?
I would rather have an overambitious union that dares to dream big despite the challenges and fail rather than one more concerned about the status quo and doesn’t want to stretch for fear of failing.
What do we gain by playing the likes Samurai in the finals year in, year out yet the same Samurai had current and former Kenyan 7s international playing for them?
I would rather we lost to Argentina, France or Emerging Boks by 40 points to nil because we would actually learn from the best and elevate the status of the tournament.
We could not even manage to invite Zimbabwe, a team that had beaten us a month ago and in Tunisia.
Moving over to the repechage in France, we were thrashed by Canada in our first game in Marseille by 68 points to 19.
We managed the tries against 10 from our more experienced opponents. The score line might be disappointing and only tells half the story but with the haphazard preparation or lack of it to truthful, I think we did well.
Canada has been to the world cup before and that experience showed in how clinical they were in running us ragged in Marseille especially in the last quarter of the game.
We face Hong Kong next on Saturday, November 17.
Our preparation towards the repechage was amateurish and substandard considering how close we came to qualifying for the world cup only to stumble against Zimbwabwe in 2014.
Our preparation in in 2014 was quite intense and we even participated in the Vodacom Cup in South Arica for about two months.
A lot was promised after the failure by the then chairman Mwangi Muthee, sadly he did not last long enough. I now believe he was better suited than the current crop we have at KRU in terms of ambition.
The cliché that we are currently accustomed to is lack of funds to effectively prepare our national teams for such events which might be true on the surface but it is not the elephant in the room.
The real reason is we are trying to develop rugby from the top-down rather than bottom-up.
If finances were the problem, how come Zimbabwe with one of the highest inflation rates in the world manages to beat us regularly when it matters?
The simple answer is they invested in the youth and grassroots structures long time ago and with the identification of young talent at an early age, these players are developed early in their schools and they feed to the national team as well rounded players with a variety of core rugby skills.
We on the other hand focus on the sevens team because it is easier to manage and finance them and most important attractive to corporate sponsorship.
We even have more registered and active rugby players in Kenya than Zimbabwe but our performance tells a different story.
A river is fed by tributaries and if the tributaries are weak the river becomes weak.
We need to fund and provide technical assistance to our schools and other institutions for our rugby to develop.
We might not see the fruits of such an investment now, but we are surely seeing the shame in not doing so earlier.
It is my sincere hope that the next chairman sees this rather than going for quick fixes which only sooth the symptoms instead of propelling us to the next level.
I hear elections are around the corner, let us put rugby first before personal ambitions or settling past scores.
We need real change at KRU.
Omwela has had his chances at the helm having been chairman with the longest stint but rugby is not developing.
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