Malindi High District Champs Again!!!

Malindi High School once again are District Rugby 15s Champions for Malindi District.  The team, which has quite a few returning players, won all three of its games to finish top in the district, not requiring a playoff.  The District sends one team to the Kilifi County Championships this week. Malindi thrashed up and coming rivals Muyeye, led by captain Somalia Abdul “Prince” Thiago 44- 0. Gede, coached by ex Malindi High Captain Harold Simba were also beaten handily 37 – 0 followed by a tough 3-0 against always tough cross-town rivals Barani to keep the clean sheet on the championship, a goal set by the team before the tournament. 

Malindi Rugby Footbal Club worked on leveling the playing field this year, inviting players to all schools to train and play with the club, attractivng  players from as far away as Galana Highschool who will also be competing for the Kilifi County Championship in Mazeras. One of the goals is to ensure that the winner of the Malindi Districts competes at the National Championships. 

Good luck at the Counties boys!

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!!!

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...

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.