Fierce and red: The W in Express’ win

When Isaac Mwesigwa was handed the task of running business at Express, his first task was setting up a competent team off the pitch to facilitate smooth running of business on the pitch.

With Express now celebrating the seventh league title, you can say the chief executive officer scored highly in all aspects and glory days are back at Wankulukuku.

Amongst the people recruited at the start of Mwesigwa’s tenure at Express were iron ladies with vast knowledge in their various fields of expertise.

These, according to Mwesigwa, all performed in their roles and should be a big example to all women trying to find their footing in a male dominated field of sports management.

“We won the trophy mainly because we had a very fit team,” Mwesigwa says.

Express’ fitness is the work of Helen Buteme, who crossed from being a rugby coach to handle the team’s strength and conditioning.

“There is a global campaign to promote women in sports and for me these ones have earned their place,” Mwesigwa opines.

With Buteme in the strength and conditioning department, Aminah Babirye in the media and communications, Patricia Ayebare at the secretariat, Mukwano Gwa Bangi are going places.

Helen Buteme

She needs no introduction in Ugandan sport but football was new territory for her having spent her active playing and coaching days in rugby.

She captained the Uganda Women’s Sevens team that played at the 2009 Rugby World Cup and only stopped coaching the team in 2019.

Mwesigwa’s call telling her about joining Express as the strength and conditioning coach paused a new challenge to her and she embraced it.

“I like challenges and I like working with athletes to help them get the best out of themselves,” Buteme told this newspaper.

Indeed, the difference between Express players and the rest in the league was visible. They easily bullied opponents off the ball and were well conditioned to last the distance in all games.

Buteme holds a Level B conditioning licence from Leipzig University, Germany.

Aminah Babirye

Express is one of the clubs with appealing social media channels since Mwesigwa arrived at the club and the lady behind the camera for all the pictures is Aminah Babirye, one of the best sports photographers in the country.

Babirye joined the club with vast experience in the trade having served in the same field at KCCA.

She has covered several events including the Africa Cup of Nations as a freelance photographer serving different media houses.

“The season has been a great one for the media team at Express. We have had the necessary support from the CEO to execute our duties,” she told this newspaper.

“Working with Express has been another step towards learning more about club media roles. Coming from KCCA where the staff members were more and roles fewer, at FC we were less and that meant we had to embrace more roles,” Babirye notes

Babirye deputised club public relations officer Peter Tabu and on several occasions took charge of press conferences at the club.

The decision for me to join Express wasn’t an easy one for Babirye who had just run down her contract at KCCA.

She had earlier been informed via email that there was no contract extension for her at Lugogo when Express announced Tabu as their PRO, she called to congratulate him and he hinted on a possibility of her moving to Wankulukuku. The rest is history.

Patricia Ayebare

You can’t miss her presence if you have tried to access the Wankulukuku VIP section of the stadium. Patricia Ayebare is always up and down getting something done.

She holds a Post Graduate Diploma in Sports Management from University of Leipzig and a Diploma in Management of Olympic Sports Organisations from the Uganda Olympic Committee.

Football might have been a new field for her but she had served in other sports federations. She left her job as Fuba office administrator to join Express.

Mwesigwa found her as the best candidate for assistant CEO at the club and he has no regrets.

“It has been an experimental and challenging ride for me having come from basketball that I knew both administratively and technically,” Ayebare said of her first season with the club.

“Thankfully, I have been able to put in practise what I acquired and learnt in my post graduate diploma in sports management while in Germany,”

Mwesigwa credits Ayebare with getting things done at the club secretariat.

However, besides the three that you will find getting down with something at Wankulukuku, Express FC boosts of a very big team of female administrators in different departments.

The number altogether are nine women – for an organisation whose selling point is football, a sport majorly dominated by men in all its sectors – this says a lot about the sport in the country today.

Speaking to Pan African Sport last year, Ayebare noted that, “It is good for the start because there are some organisations that have only one woman or none at all.”

Full list of Express FC’s female staff.

Patricia Ayebare: Senior club administrator

Marjorie Namuyomba: Assistant accountant and admin in-charge of the stadium and technical

Janet Mugabirwe: Assistant admin/finance

Aminah Babirye: Assistant Communication officer and club photographer

Helen Buteme Strength and conditioning coach

Emmanuella Oroma: Assistant strength and conditioning coach

Mariam Namuyomba: Head Chef

Fatumah Nafuka:  Assistant chef

Faridah Nagoma: Assistant chef