Malindi RFC 32 - Salt City (Gongoni) 10

The Malindi RFC starting 15 (or a bit more!)

Made it back for a friendly against Gongoni last week.   Had a great week training with the boys, we worked a bit on fitness and a bit on getting the ball out wide to score in the corner. Had some issues with some of the younger guys loosing the ball in contact despite Some good forward play. They get a bit excited when they go in and often forget to protect the ball, wanting to get more yards or hit the tackler particularly hard.  Someone somewhere must have taught poor old Nyanje to make contact by hitting the tackler with the ball... which obviously results in a lot of turnover ball.  Nyanje, protect the ball buddy! :)

Anyway, it was a good result for the club who had just come off of an important league win against South Coast Pirates which I believe sees us top of the table.  Unfortunatlye once again, the nationwide league has more walkovers than games played, but hopefully with new management at the KRU, they might be able to give a good think about how to get around this.  I think removing teams that are not travelling, removing a team like Voi which is too hard to reach, and making sure more effort is put into scheduling would be good starts.  Apparently a lot of the University based teams have games scheduled during exams... this is disappointing.

A word about Salt City RFC.  Great club, formed by the commitment of Malindi High and Galana Secondary School boys living around gongoni.  Particularly Colins, a young lad who has put a lot of effort into getting young kids to play.  The club left him a ball to help with training.  Hopefully we can use them as a feeder club, but it would be good if the subsidies could come back, and we could get them into the league on their own.  We could actually have 3 or 4 clubs in the malindi area with a team in Watamu, Guede, Malindi and Gongoni...


Some pics here from the match: Malindi vs Salt City pics

Malindi RFC Background

Malindi RFC Starting 15 at Friendly Match Ukunda Show Grounds Vs South Coast Pirates

Malindi RFC was put together in early 2013 in order to give school players who have graduated a chance to compete at the next level and to give the up and coming younger school players a chance to see more advanced rugby and provide them with older role models in an attempt to solidify the growth of a rugby culture in Malindi. It is coached by James Terjanian and Nicolas Waweru, with some assistance from Odima and support from Twaha and is lead by Captain Harold Simba and Anthony Kithi. 

The team consists of players mainly from Malindi High, Barani and Galana Secondary school with some participation from Muyeye.  Malindi High has represented the coast in the National KSSSA championships on 4 occasions in the last 5 years and is now gearing up to improve its record in those championships.

The team trains and plays at Malindi High School in Ngala estate on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays at 4:30 PM and welcomes any Rugby player residing in Malindi or Magarini Districts.  We think that there might be rugby players form upcountry that would be interested in playing but might not know about us, so any publicity to that effect would be great.  

Malindi RFC does not have solid financial backing yet, but has received some financial support to attend the Diani Beach Rugby tournament in July from Amani Riviera, a group hoping to promote tourism on the Coast to non Italians the remaining funding comes from local rugby enthusiast James Terjanian and in kind contributions from Malindi High. Malindi RFC has a development plan it is seeking sponsors for which includes introducing touch rugby to primary schools, Improving secondary school participation in Rugby, the development of a Rugby Academy in Malindi and the participation of Malindi RFC in high level National Competitions. 

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!