Provincial runners -up for sevens!!!

Lots to tell! haven't updated this in a while, but not because of lack of activity.... I came back to Malindi in mid February and continued training with the team which actually didn't lose that many players, although three key leaders did graduate and a couple players transfered to other schools. As expected they were crushed at Nationals, but I think it was a great experience for the boys. I focussed a lot more on fitness this year, realizing that to compete at a higher level, especially with those huge teams from up country, will require a great deal of physical play. I also actively lobbied to have more kids allowed to train, we usually had around thirty, and I'm still not sure what the dynamics there... It should be the most popular sport at the school, it's the only one that allows boys to travel outside of the district and now we've been to the Nationals! At any rate, it's a work in progress!

We had long chats with the boys about our goals, and decided we wanted to get to the Nationals again and this time try to win at least one game! A tall order as the road to the Nationals is long, and there are a number of strong teams who want to get there as well... But I told the boys that I was confident that if they worked extremely hard that we could do it.

So I suppose around two weeks ago the boys competed in the district championships, and despite a disappointing 5-0 loss to arch rivals Barani in the first match, the boys played well and stuck to the game plan. There was a bit of collapse and deviation from our strategy against Barani, I've always tried to get them to be very conservative in the early phases, try to suck the other team in a bit and then try our luck out wide, but sometimes whenputunderpressure, the boys start throwing the ball around wildly. There is also this funny hegemony in kenyan coast rugby to "flow" the ball which I think is counter productive. I guess it's what other people might call "hands", but usually involves carelessly launching the ball away from attackers, and I try to discourage it as much as possible. The other thing that really gets on my nerves is the celebrating. We crushed a couple of teams, both physically and on the scoreboard, and I was really disappointed to see the boys' exaggerated celebrations, especially the long ones after the tournament which we didn't win but advanced as the second place team.

Actually there was quite a lot of disorganization at the tournament which was quite disappointing given that the ministry of education has officials whose only role practically is to organize these things. We were told for instance that the tournament would be on Wednesday, and it turned out to be on Thursday, the matches were supposed to start at 8 and they started at 10, one of the teams arrived really late, and one team just left the field after being consistently being beaten, which is why we ended up in second, if they had stayed we would have finished first as we soundly beat galana 21-0 who beat barani 14-0 if i remember correctly. Room for improvement, but the frustrating thing is it makes it difficult to prepare the boys, and get them used to planning things well... At this point we were not training for sevens, but as usual focussed on giving the boys the skills to play their smash-mouth rugby. We had another couple of weeks to prepare for the provincials, and once again focussed on physical conditioning. I tried to organize friendly games with barani, but they never showed. That's another small frustration,waweru seems to think that nobody wants to play exhibition games against us because we are the provincial champs and this would give us an advantage... Bullocks, coast rugby will go nowhere if the boys aren't constantly competing and being exposed to the game.

I'm still trying to raise some money for a trip up country to expose the boys to some seriously competitive teams, I only need 500 dollars more! I was really excited for the provincials, as things were coming together nicely, the boys seemed to have bought in to our system and were fully committing themselves to the taxing training sessions we were running. I had a couple of kids close to throwing up a couple of times, and as a result, for the first time, managed to get them to bring water to training sessions. I was also extremely excited to have a chance to get back to Taita, which I love! It is so nice and cool and green, and I had contacted Nina who hooked me up with the university of Helsinki guest house which has a Finnish sauna and a gorgeous view. I'd stayed there before, years ago when Nina and I travelled to wundanyi together and climbed the Yala. I drove down from Mombasa the morning before the games, just in time to coach the boys to a solid 15-5 victory over a strong St George's. They had beaten us in a sevens tournament earlier, and to be honest, they were the only team I was concerned about! We then went on to win our other two games, 34-0 against Kilifi Township and 37-7 against Baptist.

Pretty much everyone considered us to be strong favorites to win as a result. We were hitting the other teams hard, and then killing them with our speed around the corner, especially from Duko, Kitti and Ndumbo. We had some bad luck, as our most reliable player, ball winner and tackler, Chaka was injured early in the second half of our first game, but we more than compensated with our strong bench, and despite loosing another key player "Biggie" at the start of the next game, and our bench being shortened to three, we still dominated. Chaka was obviously devastated, but with a dislocated shoulder, I tried to convince everyone that it would be better if he healed properly and was available for 15s. We had a quite exiting and tense quarter final against Mavuno which we won with a last second drop goal from Duko basically they were the first team that handled our speed and tackled well, they forced our team to work for what they got and didn't give us any freebies. I think our boys have gotten used to poor opposition and using their speed and strength to either break tackles or run around people, so I'm always happy when someone challenges us and forces us to play better rugby. That set up a semi final against our district rivals barani, who had been having a marvelous tournament including a scalping of last year's sevens champions Hindi in their first game.

We were the most nervous for this game, and resisted the temptation to play Chaka, but I pushed the boys to play our hard pounding game, and we did, and came away with a solid 14-0 win! we were so elated as it meant our ticket to the national championships in kisumu was assured. Problem was that our captain, Zeinya, finished with a horrible shoulder injury on a try saving tackle which left him writhing and howling in pain, so we decided once again to not take any risks, leave our injured players off (all three were eager to play in the final) and give some experience to the young boys. Well, they got it! A big, tough Shimo la Tewa team thrashed us, it was 15-0 before Duko made one of his great grubber aided runs fora try to bring it to 15-5 at the half, and I think it ended 35-5. The boys were devastated, but I was happy as ever, we had an incredible tournament and were off to the nationals for the second time in two years, once for fifteens, and once for sevens, accomplishing our goal once again! Now it's back to the training ground. Duko had a pretty bad bang to the head in the second half of the final, so he'll need to stay away from training for a while, but I've asked waweru to push the boys hard till they can't move anymore, hopefully, a couple of other friends who have expressed interest in helping out, Josh and Alex will come and help out.

We keep building, so I'm doing everything I can to move this thing forward now and keep the momentum we've created.  The focus now is on training the younger boys, and seeking strong oposition to play against regularly.  Watch this space!!! :)

District Champs!

After a bit of struggling... we manage to make it. Yup, unbeaten in the four game round robin tournament to take the District Championships. I'm proud of the boys, the played good rugby throughout, incorporated some kicking into the mix, played great defence and above all protected the ball and won! It was boiling hot, and I'd prepared a coolbox with 9-1.5 litre bottles of water and some ice for injuries. After a nervous first game against tough Muyeye, we put in some bigger stronger forwards also to avoid injury to our more skilled players, we won 7-0. Our next match was a 21-0 win against a surprisingly fast Galana. Our biggest test was against Barani who had beaten us in the last tournament, and we managed to stay disciplined and win 7-0 and then I put basically the second team against Gede and won 19-7. We again overcame some pretty poor refereeing... but that seems to be the norm... All in all a string of good results, one step closer to the goal. Cheers to everyone who pitched in!

New boots, new outlook!

I know it must be getting tedious, but I managed to figure out the sizes we need and got 7 sets of new boots for the boys yesterday. It was exciting to have most of the boys in the scrimmage actually wearing decent kit! Thanks to Tara and Wild Fitness! I think everyone feels a bit more prepared for the districts on Monday.

Another nice thing is that everyone seems healed up and rested and ready to push for the tournament on Monday. It's great to be able to have options for the first team, as I wrote earlier, in the last tournament my selection was limited by injury. I think the new boots will help with this too. I've been pushing the boys pretty hard in practice with respect to fitness, and we've worked on being more deliberate about how we move the ball inside and out. I also joined in a few times to challenge the first team, it's been really fun to get in there and get my hands dirty. Feeling pretty fit these days!

A nice surprise is that I see a lot of the second team players stepping up and challenging the first team in the games I have them play against each other. I think selection will become a lot more difficult! Lots of little things have improved as well, kicking, set plays such as lineouts and scrums. I really hope we can put it all together for next monday.

Another nice piece of news is that Reuters apparently has commissioned a feature piece on the team, so we will have another camera crew at the tournament on Monday and a professional photographer... hard work is paying off! :)

Lots of news! Wild fitness and Barani tournament

Right, well have been quite busy over the last week, helping with organising the music festival, rugby and figuring out what to do next! Lots of news since the last post. First off, we managed to get some support from Wild Fitness from Watamu who managed to drum up 10 000 ksh in sponsorship which we were going to use for balls, but in the end decided on, yes, you guessed it! BOOTS! That will buy us a bit more than three pairs, which might mean we won't have anyone playing in socks at the district championships! Thanks Tara!!!

Secondly, we participated as expected in the Barani Tournament, we had quite a few injuries so had to play some of the smaller and less experienced players. The skill level was significantly lower than Shanzu and the pitch was tiny, with 2 metre try zones with casuarina trees growing in them! A major bonus was being introduced to Twaha who is the rugby development official for the coast. Hope if things get rolling that we can work on something together to get rugby properly up and running in Malindi. He seemed like a great guy with a good knowledge and love for the game!

We had a tough first game against a much bigger and very low skilled Muyeye side. All accounts a very rough/dirty game which we came away with a 5-0 win, but injuries to our top three players. The next game was the worst I've seen our boys play, a 15-0 loss to Barani. Lots of panicking and turn overs galore, I was surprised and thought we'd taken a few steps back from the level we were at in Shanzu where we were destroying the cream of the crop. I think that the team got away from our strength (protecting the ball) in search of more space and creativity, but I guess it was a bit too creative. The last game against St Georges who we expected to be our biggest challenge was more of the same. Granted we only had 4 sets of boots on the pitch and lots of injuries, but again lots of turn overs and a 15-0 loss.

Not what I was expecting but I suppose it's better to get the kinks out here than at the districts or provincials. Back to the drawing board. Going to work on fitness and ball control this week. The boys were off for mid-term holidays, so a well deserved week off. Next week is the districts so we have our work cut out for us. Hope it will go well! Looking forward to getting some comments! Cheers, J

Preparation for Malindi Tournament!

So another tournament this weekend, mostly against district competition, but will be a good test for the lessons we learnt last weekend. Hope some of the bigger teams from Mombasa also come down, but we'll have to see. I'll be happy if our second team wins some games. Spoke to some friends here and abroad about sponsoring the team so hope that maybe results for this tournament will pay off! See you all there?

Shanzu Tournament, our first Test... 3rd place!

Well, all in all we had a great tournament. Wasn't sure how it was going to go at the beginning, I really hadn't prepared the team to play sevens but hadspent most of our time working on the basics. Only found out about the tournament on wednesday so spent three sessions working on basic things like sevens scrums and line outs (I think we probably won around 20 percent of those in the tournament!) and as we only had a couple of players from last year, it really hurt us!

But the surprise was great, we wen't 4-0 on the first day of the round robin with big wins against Mariakani, Kwale and Hamisi, also sheepishly beating our B-side which is an other topic to discuss here! The next day I think we were unfairly punished by the referee and lost on a penalty try 7-5 to Shimo la Tewa, the other unbeaten team at the tournament on their home ground. This set us up with a semi-final berth against Mariakani whom we destroyed the previous day, but again (and I suppose you only say this when you lose!) we had a few calls go the wrong way and we lost 5-0. For a moment there I thought we were the class of the tournament and that we were going home with the trophy. In the end we finished third, which in my mind was a huge accomplishment given my expectations at the beginning of the tournament.

Conditions were less than perfect.

It was very difficult to get the boys water or food, and of course the school is on a very tight

budget. I guess traditionally the players here don't eat anything after breakfast so on the first day they didn't eat anything at all until after all the games were finished which meant around 4:30 pm. On the second day I convinced our other coach Waweru to spring for some bananas which the boys ate after the first match. Also equipment was a HUGE issue. There were around 5 pairs of functioning boots on our whole squad. In fact our players borrowed boots from t

he other teams which meant less than perfect conditions for warming up as they had to wait for the ongoing games to finish before they could get their gear on. This is something that I'd like to remedy! Anyone out there have boots?

The second team was another adventure. I figured since we could bring down 20 players we might as well give the younger kids a chance to play. On some levels this back fired, I think this had to do with the culture on the team. I guess the younger guys on some level didn't feel prepared, on an other were just happy to come along for the ride. Many of them after the first game (they were thrashed!) said they might sit the next game out and play in the third game. I've never come across this in all my years of coaching. But give them credit, after they saw the first team pushing hard, some of them rallied and played hard, doing better in their later games. We had a big prop out there with them, and he played the final game with only socks on his feet! Imagine playing sevens in socks on an african pitch!

All in all a smashing success for the first tournament! The first team really gelled and the second team came up with an identity, and today at practice (it was optional and non contact) I could see that they had taken a lot from their experience. We even stopped on the way home and watched the marvellous 6 nations clash between Ireland and France! There's another tournament here in Malindi this weekend. I think St Georges is coming down along with local Galana and the hosts Barani. I was hoping we would meet the perennial champions Waa this weekend, but apparently the school closed down due to riots, as did all the extra curricular activities, I'm trying to see if they might come up to play us in this tournament. Onwards and upwards! I didn't manage to get many pictures of game action as I was a bit excited, but here's a little crappy video of the big game against fellow undefeated team Tewa...

Day before the tournament

The boys were pumped up today... a bit nervous. I have no idea what to expect, but I think they'll do ok. I think probably these guys would be smoked by my high school team when I was playing, but I suppose given the amount of exposure to rugby and the lack of equipment... maybe it's normal. Suprisingly it's also the sporting culture that's weak... but I digress. We tried to prepare them, we'll se how it goes. We decided to pick a first and a second team to go rather than mixing them up. I think the boys prefer it that way too. As an asside, I'm putting up the picture of the new form 1 prop! :)

Game action! Preparation for Tourney this W/E

Got some great news at training yesterday. Apparently we've been invited to a tournament at Shanzu this weekend where the best teams on the coast will be competing. It's a bit early days and haven't gotten through everything I've wanted to skills wise with this team, and haven't had a game yet with this new group. But the exposure to game conditions will be great! It's a sevens tournament though and have been preparing more for fifteens. Am curious to see what the refereeing will be like and not sure how to prepare the boys for different interpretation of rules, how much flexibility they have handling the ball on the deck, how lineouts and scrums are judged etc... We had a bit of an issue this week as kids were sent home for their school fees, so training cancelled on monday and yesterday only had around 20 boys, some of them the new form ones (we have a new nice big prop by the way! :) ). But all in all excited about testing the team and getting some action in. Great passing from the tackle drill yesterday with a lot of fluidity but a bit concerned about the hand speed down the line. Tackles are great though, lots of bravery and intensity. The irony is that they love tackling but not so much being tackled! Would love to hear ideas.