When the 2017 National Hockey League campaign commenced four months ago, defending champions Wananchi stomached a really rough start.
First, team manager Eugene Miheso and club captain Derrick Akuwa were banned, and then last season’s MVP Innocent Mbabali become ineligible to play in the Ugandan league because he had transferred to a club in Kenya.
Initially, a player would be allowed to feature for any club in Uganda as well as that in Kenya in the same period, but the rules we changed prior season start and Wananchi suffered the repercussions first.
That, coupled with Akuwa’s ban meant Wananchi lost two of their best and important players. Wananchi despondently opened the season with a 2-0 loss to Weatherhead and went on to lose 3-2 to Kampala Hockey Club Stallions in their second game.
It was the first time this was happening. Wananchi had never before endured such a start and this was indeed seen as catastrophic.
Wananchi, however, recovered and since that KHC loss, the side has won all bar two of their games. The two games were draws against Weatherhead and KHC.
It is a run that has seen them top the table standings, and their coach who also doubles and the chairperson of the club Joshua Opolot believes the change in strategy helped the side come through.
“When we lost our key players Akuwa and Mbabali and our team manager at the start of the season, the team became really disorganized and the administration was also a bit shaken,” Opolot said.
“These young players were shaken and scared because they had never played a league without Akuwa and Mbabali. They were dependent on these senior players so their absence was a very big blow.
“But we decided to compose ourselves, we planned and we came back. We changed the strategy of our play. We decided to use the same players but in a different way. We used Thomas Opio [Opio is a striker and was top scorer in the league last season] as a defender, and we also pushed Okello upfront yet he’s a defender. We decided to change strategy and it is paying off because we haven’t lost any game since the first two. We realized our weakness and turned them into our strength. We realized we lost key players so we prepared those we had, used them the best way possible, and it has paid off.”
With the third round two games away from its closure, Wananchi lead the table standings with 25 points, three points ahead of KHC and eight off Weatherhead. KHC and Weatherhead have, however, played a game and two games less respectively.
