Ugandan sport: There’s no shortcut to success

The Cranes went on to draw goalless their next game against Zimbabwe at the home-based players African Nations Championship (Chan) before succumbing to the more technically blessed Moroccans 3-1 and out of the competition held in South Africa.

Cricket Cranes, the national senior men’s team, were – meanwhile – the other part of the world, maintaining consistency but on a different pedestal. Coach Johan Rudolph’s side lost all their four matches at the ongoing ICC 2015 World Cup qualifiers in New Zealand - batting again their Achilles heel, and will now seek salvation in the playoffs.
On to Lugogo, where Uganda was hosting the 2014 Africa Club Hockey Championships after beating off neighbours Kenya, only the ladies team Weatherhead could make the podium, claiming bronze.

We talk of some disciplines improving locally only to discover our limits when we cross the border for serious continental - even global - assignments.
No doubt some positives were realised at Chan and Cranes coach Micho Sredojevic will be credited for putting faith in the little-known Yunus Sentamu.

He believed in the boy and the Vipers young striker never disappointed. It was not just about the three goals he scored, it’s his awareness and football brain that picks him out as something. With a good coach, Sentamu can only get better.

Which brings us to the question - do most Ugandan coaches really make the cut? While Cranes beat Burkina Faso, their off the ball movement and passing was questionable against Zimbabwe before it turned fictional against Morocco.

Those are basics serious footballing nations teach kids at a younger age. But lack of structures for such here means you can only have half baked material with an occasional Sentamu every now and then sprouting. Uganda Cricket Association (UCA), for example, were doing well with schools’ cricket until recently when they put most of their focus and resources onto the senior men’s national team.

You would understand them because if the national team is doing well and say, win their playoff against Canada or Scotland on Sunday, they will stay in Division II.

That would see Uganda continue receiving the high performance grant from the ICC of $350,000 (Shs876m) until 2017, and the reverse is true.

But you see we cannot make our national teams the Alfa and Omega. Development for schools cricket is paramount if you are to continue servicing the national team. That is the same mistake Fufa have done over years, focusing all their energies on the Cranes – even as the topflight league’s soul is painfully broken right in the middle.

Similar for hockey. Just early last year, infighting saw four topflight clubs petition the National Council of Sports (NCS) challenging the re-election of the federation’s chairman Dunstan Nsubuga among other grievances.

As a result, the league saw no action and these are the same people who expected to match onto the pitch and challenge other countries with active and strong leagues. The earlier we acknowledge that there is no shortcut to success the better.

Cranes shouldn’t hide behind Bafana Bafana’s failure

There has been a slightly weighty argument that having all the necessary facilities does not guarantee you success thanks to “bunch of losers,” in South African Sports Minister Fikile Mbalula’s words.

Mbalula was lambasting the Bafana Bafana after their group stage exit in from Chan. Perhaps the minister was right given that the South African government put everything in place for the team to flourish.

The argument here is that you can have all the facilities and still not make it; so we should stop the argument that the Cranes needs government support, that we need youth structures, that we need good facilities to be successful on the continent and globally.

I mean, who has better facilities than the USA, than England? And how far do they go in football? But again, there is the aspect of generations, of talent. It could be argued that South Africa is facing a dire lack of talent, while Uganda has been lucky to have some raw talent that is only born onto scavengers’ hands.

Just imagine if those drop-in-an-ocean talents; that Sentamu - found a credible and strong league, credible federation and structures, good government will, corporate sponsorship, and all that South Africa has? I doubt we would be as poor as Bafana.

Achon should be embraced, not locked out of UAF

So the Uganda Athletics Federation (UAF) elections will still go ahead this weekend despite a petition by aggrieved districts to have the exercise postponed to allow a voting register clean-up and president Domic Otucet’s challengers time to prepare.

NCS chairman Bosco Onyik yesterday did everything okay, including forcing the high-handed hand of the UAF to let Julius Achon contest against Otucet, who is seeking a second four-year term…, but allow the elections proceed.

In trying to keep Achon – the 1996 and 2000 Olympian – out, UAF were biting a bitter chalice. Granted they were following their constitution by demanding only paid-up member districts to 0vote, and Achon’s Lira among others had not paid up.

But rather than make the rule uniform, UAF were reportedly using the federation money to pay for those districts they consider ‘their own’ to pay their annual subscription. Now Lira have not paid up but was yesterday allowed to contest.

Add to Stephen Kiprotich’s Kapchorwa, who were yesterday dismayed by ‘fake’ delegates UAF claimed to be real, and you have a country with uniform autocratic tendencies.

Anyway, that’s beside the point. My concern is, why allow the elections proceed yet the mess is still at large?
Why try to lock out Achon, whose contacts globally could do Uganda wonders, whose Achon Uganda Children’s Fund is already showing positives?

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