Prime
A case for the Crested Cranes
Author, Mr Moses Banturaki. PHOTO/FILE.
What you need to know:
- In case you need any reminding, all this is happening in a year in which the much favoured men’s team the Cranes, miserably failed to make their third straight Afcon finals. One would therefore think that progress from the Crested Cranes is a matter of national relief.
Our women’s national football team, the Crested Cranes, midweek returned from Ethiopia after dumping the hosts out of the Women’s Africa Cup of Nations (AWCON) qualifier. Up next is eternal rival Kenya, who we can’t seem to avoid lately. A win over them will take us into the tournament proper.
In case you need any reminding, all this is happening in a year in which the much favoured men’s team the Cranes, miserably failed to make their third straight Afcon finals. One would therefore think that progress from the Crested Cranes is a matter of national relief.
So, why isn’t the country in lockdown, completely paralysed with excitement? We are in places that the Cranes can only dream of right now. Yet little gets noticed as the Crested Cranes have gone about their task with quiet efficiency.
The significance of what the Crested Cranes is doing is further amplified by the fact that they have no business punching at this weight at all. This outfit didn’t even exist 5 years ago.
Admittedly, a lot has changed for the better recently. But outside the men’s senior team, our qualifying campaigns were often stories of embarrassment and many a benevolent host offering to close funding gaps.
In fact, it can be argued that there are many teams ahead of us in rankings not because they are more technically gifted but because they have always invested in the development of the women’s game. We on the other hand seemed to go to only those that our humbling dinner and car-wash fundraisers would allow. And that was on the occasions we could raise a full team.
Still our talent shines through and several of the girls on the national team like Laki Otandeka, Juliet Nalukenge, and Sandra Nabweteme are professionals based outside Uganda.
Shouldn’t this budding outfit then endear the Crested Cranes to a nation?
Far from. Not many Ugandans think much of women football. The sport may be as old as formal Western education itself, but when it comes to women’s football there hasn’t always been much of a local competition to talk of and the sport must sometimes borrow its stars from other sports like handball.
It seems therefore that the chances of women football in a socially conservative male-biased and underfunded nation such as ours are limited. But it doesn’t have to be this way.
The popularity of a sport can’t be forced upon people, but it can be deliberately and consistently practiced until it sits on top of the minds of our restless youth. This must start in schools and churches. When schools and church groups play, parents watch and interest is generated. This could be the self-perpetuating cycle that women football is crying out for.
I should note that this is a matter that can’t be left to stretched-out individual associations or the inspiration of people like Jean Namayega Sseninde, a former footballer who had professional stints at the very highest level of the sport.
The national budget, and rightly so, now directly allocates funds to the women’s game. That is to be applauded and all progress in the women’s game, no matter how hesitant, is to a large extent due to this heightened consideration.
And when all that is done, consider this. Women football has already produced Jean Sseninde, a global superstar whose charity work associates itself with luminaries like Juan Mata. That stuff is uplifting because when it comes to how much the public image of a country can be lifted, sports aren’t that discriminative.
This year, Chemutai’s gold enhanced the nation’s image more than all of other sports put together. Given a chance, women footballers can too.
Email: [email protected]
Twitter: @MBanturaki
