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Let’s talk about women’s rugby
A recap of the 2019/20 season
We begin with the national teams, both fifteens and sevens.
On a sad note, the Lady Rugby Cranes have not played a single test match since the Elgon Cup return leg at Kyadondo in July last year. This year, they have missed out on the Rugby Africa Cup and Elgon Cup after Rugby Africa cancelled the entire continental season.
The Sevens team, on the other hand, featured at the 2019 Rugby Africa Women’s Sevens hosted by Tunisia in October. They finished second behind eventual champions South Africa in Pool B, ahead of Zimbabwe and Zambia. But they returned home with a rather sad fifth-place overall finish (out of 12) that saw them miss out on a chance of qualifying for the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo.
Back at home, the local season kicked off at the turn of the decade. Important to note is that this year, there were 8 teams actively engaged in rugby activities across the country. This is the highest tally the country has ever registered in a single calendar year, and women’s rugby continues to grow deliberately.
In the Central Region Women’s XV Championship, Thunderbirds laid claim to being the finest women’s rugby team in the country for another year. The Kyadondo outfit staged a second-half comeback against Avengers in Entebbe that saw them crowned champions by points difference in the last game of the championship.
0- No team in the Central Region Women’s XV Championship registered a home victory in the 2020 season.
The nation-wide franchise tournament that would have been played after the end of the regular season in March was postponed due to logistical reasons and eventually cancelled due to the coronavirus pandemic.
This week’s quiz question:
Who scored the last points of the Central Region Women’s XV Championship 2020?
Answer is at the end of this newsletter.
A new coaching set up
In March, the Uganda Rugby Union announced the appointment of a fresh coaching setup for the Lady Rugby Cranes and Uganda Women’s Sevens.
Leonard Lubambula replaced Edgar Lemerigar as head coach of the Lady Rugby Cranes and Charles Onen was named his assistant. For the Sevens, Onen took over from Helen Koyokoyo Buteme. Kigongo Sebalamu joined the team as the Strength & Coaching coach and is responsible for both teams.
However, the gentlemen at the helm are not new personalities in the coaching setup, especially at the national team. Onen used to occasionally work with his predecessor Buteme during sevens training while Lubambula was Lemerigar’s assistant and also served as the men’s U20 assistant coach.
Try And Stop Us
World Rugby launched a ‘Try And Stop Us’ campaign in May 2019 alongside the Women In Rugby brand. The objective was to inspire girls and women to participate in rugby and increase engagement. Among the original ‘Unstoppables’ was Uganda’s Lucky Nirere, the youngest of the fifteen selected from across the world.
This year, World Rugby has empowered unions and regional federations globally to drive the second phase of the campaign. Rugby Africa is yet to reveal their own ‘Unstoppables’ from the application process, and there is hope that there will be some of our own among them.
Quiz answer: Mary Kyoita. A match-winning penalty for Thunderbirds against Avengers in Entebbe.
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