Uganda Women’s Rugby Premiership defending champions, Black Pearls, find themselves 7 points away from the top of the table, after unprecedented back-to-back losses.
Winning has become a culture at the Black Pearls, bagging the league a record 4 consecutive times, and securing a National 7s title in 2023.
After winning the 2025 league title on the last day by a single point, followed by not being at their absolute best in the National 7s and electing to sit out the Uganda Cup once again, one would expect the Pearls to come out all guns blazing in the 2026 women’s league, but that has not been the case.
The Black Pearls started the season with wins against the Bottom 3; the Ewes, Panthers and She Wolves, but an adjusted fixture against the Thunderbirds exposed holes in the Pearls.
With the return of Emilly Lekuru, the Pearls were expected to be unstoppable, and unstoppable they were, through a Lekuru brace before the 20-minute mark, but then the wheels started to fall off the wagon. The Pearls ended up losing 25-23 to the hosts.
In what Coach Koyokoyo Buteme described as “the players abandoning the game structure and deciding to play as individuals instead of as a team”, the Pearls went on to lose their next game against the Nile Rapids. By halftime, they had conceded 22 points and only managed a meagre 3 points of their own. A hard-fought second half was enough to rescue the Pearls from a 25-17 loss in Jinja.
These losses did not come as a surprise to coach Buteme. “The irony is that before playing the Thunderbirds, I told the players that we would lose, same thing I told them before playing the Nile Rapids. As a coach, you can tell when all your players are on the same wavelength with each other and with you. So far, in all the games that we’ve played, we’ve not all been on the same wavelength,” she told Kawowo Sports.
But Buteme is determined not to leave her players to their own devices. She advises them to get back to the game plan and stay united.
“Rugby is a team sport, and it takes everyone to ensure success. Getting to the top is much easier than staying there, so complacency is the surest way to topple down, and once you hit rock bottom, it is a long, long way back up,” she notes.