New Video for Malindi High Rugby vs Muyeye

Malindi vs Muyeye

Was just playing around with some old game film I had, this was their first game this year... kind of hilarious to watch... you can see how low quality the rugby is!

Look out Driftwood! Here we come!!!!!

Very excited this week as we finish preparation for the Driftwood sevens tournament.  This will be Malindi RFC's first KRU sanctioned event (I learnt last week at the Kabeberi sevens that it is no longer the KRFU!).  Proof: http://www.kenyarfu.com/index.php/competitions/national-sevens-circuit/drift-wood-sevens/429-driftwood-sevens-draw-released-homeboyz-seeded-first :)

So we are training, and the boys are excited.  I mentioned that I made it to Nairobi for the Kabeberi tournament at Mwamba's Railway club.  Well set up, excellent calibre rugby.  I was very happy to finally meet rugby personalities and movers and shakers such as Tank Otieno, Felix Ochieng, Mitch Ochola, Chiro Nyinge, Adelade Nasambu, Thomas Opiyo and countless others.  Unfortunately my phone was stolen right after I met them all so I lost all the pictures and contacts, but hopefully can recoup them next weekend! Thanks all of you for taking the time to chat and share a beer!

I mention this because many of these will be at Driftwood and so am looking forward to showing them what Malindi Rugby is about.  I am a bit worried, we are quite young and obviously will have no players with any experience of competition at this level.  We are playing in the B division and having watched the A division at Kabeberi, I think we might be able to compete.  Don't get me wrong, the top teams (Mwamba, Strathmore, Quins, etc) performed at an extremely high level, perhaps for sevens rugby the top elite level.  But there were some teams that didn't quite have it together.  I do have a couple of players that I'm hoping to showcase, kina Harold Simba and Anthony Kithi (we call him Zeinia) are two players that are relatively well known on the coast.  They have been on coast select teams which travelled to the Safari sevens tournament and I think between the two of them they played in 4 or five KSSSA nationals for fifteens and sevens, so for the coast they are established.  I'm hoping that Mitch and Co will have a good look at them and possibly that the Union might think about helping us invest in developing players here on the north coast.

Looking forward to seeing you all in Mombasa!

Malindi Rugby Development Plan

I have spoken earlier about the Malindi Rugby Development plan.  I have garnered interest from a couple of sponsors in Malindi, but the aim is to start small and get going.  Mine and Waweru’s goal (we welcome anyone who wants to help out!) is to have a team from Malindi win the nationals in the next ten years, and to have 3 players on the national 15s team in the next ten years!  The plan itself has been developed in much more detail with activities and budgets lined out. Happy to hear your comments!

The plan has four prongs which are the following:

Introduce touch rugby to the primary schools, sending ex high school players (club players) to primary schools and giving each school one ball, the player would lead them in "touch" training games to ensure exposure at an early age and ensure that we don't always have to start from scratch when they get to high school.

Increase the number of secondary schools playing rugby in Magarini and Malindi districts, currently there are 7 (two of the ones in Magarini are quite shaky), this would involve some basic training of coaches, a bit of supervision and provision of some equipment.

Development of a “Rugby Accademy” which is essentially a select side taken from the high schools playing rugby.  Any rugby player put forward by his (and yes eventually her) coach who has at least a B would qualify.  We would aim for 30 under 20 players and 30 under 17 players, put them up for a residential 3 week camp, bring in a forwards and a backs coach from up country and give them a 5k scholarship for that term.  The Accademy would take place in three separate sessions during the school holiday period (April, August and December. The two teams would then take part in at least one tour of a rugby playing area at the end of the academy period.

Development of a Rugby club with Senior and Junior Sides. As I mentioned, we have been working hard on this lately but the one stumbling block is the entry into high profile competitions and transport resources.  This year we are aiming to enter (if the KRU allows) the next Chairman's cup (Ezra from St Georges credits this and the transport facilitation for his success this year and urged us to look into it) and the Driftwood 7s and Prinsloo tournaments in the national 7s circuit which is very soon.  

Things going up and up, club getting sponsorship maybe, diani beach tourney etc...

Again another late post!  One of these days I’ll actually write about things when they happen.  But to be honest it is quite nice to document everything so that people I’m dealing with can get the picture and so that I remember how everything went! So, I met some Italian investors who appear to want to promote Malindi to non Italians and they reckon that Rugby is a good vehicle for that.  There was some discussion of a Rugby Academy to teach street kids how to play rugby… the only thing is there aren’t really street kids in Malindi! :) These guys made quite a splash at the beginning.  Without checking whether or not there was any rugby happening in Malindi they invited the Nondies’ sevens team to Rome to play against Frascati (a minor Italian team based in Rome) who proceeded to thrash them.  They paid the nondies way there, put them up in hotels and paid all their expenses etc etc… it’s interesting to hear the players’ account of it all!  A bit frustrating for me because they probably could have done a month long tour with the same amount of money and probably that amount of money could have moved mountains for Rugby here!  Anyway, I met up with these guys and they are interested in what we are doing which is great!  I’ve sent them the documents I’ve been preparing for the development of rugby in Malindi including introducing some touch rugby in primary schools, increasing secondary school participation, setting up a select team/elite junior academy, finance some tours for junior teams and yes, set up a senior club which regular participation in the 7s and 15s tournaments.  They seem to be on board, they also have plans to work on a stadium etc, but I’m trying to get them to build slowly and surely and make more efficient and effective investments without throwing their money all over the place.  Well, have discussed this with the boys, and they’re all pretty excited about it.  The level of training has significantly increased!  They paid initially for us to go to the Diani Beach tournament at Forty Thieves which was a lot of fun mostly and excellent networking opportunity!  Special thanks to George Barbour for hosting us and making us feel part of the south coast rugby community and extra special thanks to Helen Antoni who introduced us to the idea of going down and greatly facilitated our participation! We did actually surprisingly well at the tournament considering we didn’t know a lot of the funny rules! It was also kind of interesting to see the reaction of the guys watching the older guy plays and to see two mzungu populated teams in the final… one was called Karen Crusaders which is kind of funny!  So lots of things going on!  More very soon I hope! Karibuni mazowezi any time at Malindi high at 4:30 if you are going to be in malindi!!!