I still vividly remember the first time I directly interacted with Robert Musinguzi. I was on the bench for the Central Region Championship match against Impis in 2016.
During the warmup, he asked me, “Sir, how are you? Which position do you play?” The holidays had just started and although I hadn’t been training, I had boldly shown up to play on matchday. I told him that I could slot in anywhere in the backline and he replied saying, “Okay, we shall see.”
Looking back, I should have been more specific. The likes of Timothy Kisiga, William Nkore and Raymond Emanzi were still in Sailors. A little confidence would have gone some way in getting more game time.
With about five minutes left to the end of the match and all the hard work done by the team, Musinguzi turned to me and asked if I was ready to jump on. I sprung to my feet and at the next stop in play, he deployed me to the openside wing. I recall making my first tackle successfully but my first carry on the ball was met by a heavy tackle that forced me to spill the ball forward and the match ended there. He never told me but I know Musinguzi had seen, as he had promised.
He calls himself ‘Mus Bobby’ on Twitter but Musinguzi has had many other nicknames. From ‘Coach B’ to ‘Bobi Wine’ to ‘Bobson’… and others. To many, though, he is known as Coach Bobby.
Musinguzi is an accomplished rugby manager and his records speak for themselves.
He was Sailors coach for two seasons from 2015 before he took charge of Black Pirates. He oversaw 127 matches as head coach and achieved a colourful eighty-nine per cent win rate. During that time, he won everything there was to win in Ugandan rugby – Uganda Cup, the league, the sevens series, and the Makerere Tens. The highlight remains the 2017-18 treble-winning season.
In 2021, he was named assistant (backs) coach as the Uganda Rugby Cranes made an unsuccessful shot at Rugby World Cup 2023 qualification.
Last year, Musinguzi officially handed over coaching duties to his first captain Marvin Odongo and became Director of Rugby at the club.
Personally, I was his player in Sailors until 2019 when he promoted me to Pirates. I did not play so much because, in significant part, of my insufficient rugby abilities.
One of my most precious memories was when Pirates won the national sevens series in 2018. That finale circuit at Kyadondo Rugby Club when a Uganda Sevens academy, led by a high-flying Solomon Okia, spoilt the Sea Robbers party.
I had trained with the squad during my third-year holidays for close to two months and had made the playing squad on two of the circuits. But that weekend, I had not made the cut. So when the team were at the podium celebrating a dream treble, not sure if I belonged with the “sevens boys”, I watched and admired from a distance.
I was so elated when Coach Bobby approached me, and Kelvin Balagadde with whom we had won the Central Region championship with Sailors earlier that season, to personally hand to us our gold medals and appreciate our small contribution to the team. How he had located us under the dark skies, I have no idea. But to this day, that medal is one of my highest achievements as a rugby player.
There would be nothing to show for it had Coach Bobby not gone out of his way to hand me my medal.
My admiration for him grew more when I learnt that we were both Ntare School old boys and that he was an engineer. One thing I picked from him, and something I apply in my work as a sports journalist, is evidence-based decision-making. Coach Bobby keeps records of almost everything he and his teams do on a rugby pitch, and he uses statistics to inform his decisions. Numbers do not lie but they mean nothing if you can’t make sense of them. And I learnt that from Coach Bobby.
As Frank Kidega said in his tweet, he “could write a book about Bobson”, and so could I. And many others.
There is a certain culture he brought and emphasized at Pirates; of doing things in an organised way, respect and hard work, and also having fun. He also introduced the culture of sharing a bottle of wine with his opposite man before kick-off at Pirates’ home ground. That’s the focused but yet fun and stylish man he is.
For me, it was a privilege to play for him, learn from him, and work with him.
Coach Bobby, thank you so much.
