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!

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!!!