Kenya Women’s Rugby deserves attention too

For a few years now, the Kenya men’s Sevens team has been the pride of the country with the great performances they have been displaying in the HSBC World rugby series. In just this season, Shujaa has turned from being the pride of Kenya to be the shame of the country.

The women’s team has done the vice versa at the Hong Kong 7s. They beat neighbours Uganda 24-0 then thrashed the hosts Hong Kong 36-5 and finally Papua New Guinea 20-10 to seal three victories in the group stages. The Lionesses extended their tremendous form to the quarter finals where they beat Argentina 17-15. Unfortunately, they lost 17-5 to Brazil who went on to win the main cup.

At the beginning of this season, the poor performance of the men was solely blamed on the lack of services from the senior players who had boycotted training and matches because of low pay. Kenya Rugby Union under the stewardship of Richard Omwela were forced to come to an agreement with the senior players in an attempt to salvage the team and avoid relegation.

With the return of the senior players, however, the team’s performance is still low having bowed out of the Hong Kong 7s at the semi-finals of the challenge cup trophy. For all of the legs played this season, Shujaa has always bowed out of the main cup from the group stages and is yet to even get to the finals of the challenge cup.

While the men’s 7s team has been struggling to find their form, the ladies just played in one leg and performed better than Shujaa has been able to for the whole season. The lionesses do not play in a lot of international competition but when they got the chance to play in Hong Kong they proved to the KRU that they deserve to play in more tournaments.

Leading the squad is one iconic lady Janet Okello whos erugby career is now at the roof. Okello plays club rugby with Mwamba Women RFC and is arguably the best female rugby player in the country. Perharps she is better than some male players in the local leagues. A lot of people know very little about the Lionesses but a good number know Janet Okello.

The KRU has been putting more focus on the Men’s teams and has somewhat disregarded the women. As Oduor Gangla has taken leadership at the Union, some have questioned his ability to lead especially after he announced and only Sylvia Kamau who is the CEO at the union was the lady in the committee. Even the person Oduor picked to be in charge of Women Rugby was a man, Hilary Itela.

The ladies Rugby team has always proven it’s worth. They were crowned African Champions just last year after downing Uganda 29-7 in the final in Gaborone, Botswana. The team only started playing in competitions during the 2016 Olympics in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil.

Back when the men’s team was picking up during the times of the likes of Humphrey Kayange and Biko Adema there performances were similar to what the lionesses are currently doing. The support the team got led to their success over the years, the success that can hardly be talked about as the current team reflects nothing of the legendary team.

The way the men’s team’s performance has been deteriorating can be the same way the Lionesses will fall if the players are not treated as they deserve to. It is clear that Shujaa’s performance only started dropping after senior players boycotted training and matches.

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The lionesses have already proven their worth in the Hong Kong 7s, all they need to keep up their performance is more support.