Musanjufu Benjamin Kavubu
The reality is now setting in. Banter aside about special 7s new kit, you know all the beauties of Uganda Rugby that make it more interesting, about Kyadondo being home. I am certain Rams started hosting games there before they moved to Mulago, or I am mistaken. Most importantly, the third stop of the Uganda Rugby 7s Series just told us something important about the state of domestic rugby in Uganda, and I want to believe also in Africa, and it was not flattering.
I know, but hold on: I can never pour water on Rams. I have respect for sides that have contributed to CURA, even when sometimes their approaches are antithesis to my perspective of regional rugby. Rams won Stop 3 at Kyadondo. They are no longer referred to as circuits this season, still trying to figure out the technicalities of the innovation. Rams, a side currently competing in the second tier of the 15s game, a tier I can comment on authoritatively, I believe, a club that by the standings had been grinding through the series without the firepower to trouble the top four. Actually, it was very painful for me to watch Rams during the Stone City stop because they looked like a shadow of who they used to be. They walked into a weekend where Pirates, Heathens, and Walukuba were operating with depleted squads because their best players were on national team duty at Driftwood Sevens on the Kenyan coast, and they took full advantage. Points, wins, and the whole stop title by Sunday evening. I was in class somewhere but I had to excuse myself and take in what was happening.
Good for Rams, like genuinely. That kind of opportunism is exactly what ambitious clubs should do. And for storytellers, those are moments I believe Uganda Rugby should milk to sell the sport. Sponsors hate things where one side wins forever, so Cinderella moments are marketing gold. But I am certain everyone currently in CURA was happy for Rams, they have had a hard two years. Next time I will tell the tale of how Rams is the most important club in Uganda Rugby, with the number of affiliated sides it has set up in the regions. Today is for Kyadondo 7s and Uganda Rugby.
The question the win raises is not about Rams. It is about the system that made it possible.
Look at the standings after three stops.
Black Pirates lead on 54 points. Heathens are one point behind on 53, with a superior points difference of 232, that tells you they have been the more dominant side across the series despite sitting second. Walukuba, a side that seems to be 7s specialists, are third on 49. Kobs fourth on 47. These four clubs are operating in a different competition from everyone else. The gap between fourth place and fifth place Buffaloes on 45 looks small in points, but the quality differential across the series has been significant. The gap between the top four and seventh-placed Victoria Sharks on 32 is a chasm. Meanwhile, Uganda Rugby needs to dialogue about Victoria Sharks because they seem to be facing technical inertia.
After three stops, what this table describes is not a competitive league. It is a competition with four serious clubs, a middle tier surviving on effort, and then a bottom section that is essentially development football being played at senior level. Mbale Elephants have conceded 474 points in 14 games across three stops a points-against figure that is not a bad run of form. It is a structural mismatch between what Mbale can field and what the top clubs bring to the park. Can’t wait for Issa Metrics to break it all down after all six stops.
In the numbers
None of this is new. It is the same conversation Ugandan rugby has been having for years without resolution: the competition is not genuinely competitive across all 12–16 sides. The competition format papers over that gap by giving everyone the same fixture schedule regardless of the actual quality differential. Anyway, one can also say that gave Rams an opportunity to beat up on everyone who is someone and take the title over the weekend.
For a minute, hold that thought. The Rams win adds a specific dimension to that conversation that is worth examining honestly. When a second-tier 15s club can win a 7s stop specifically because the national team called up the best players from the clubs above them, what that reveals is that the depth behind those clubs is not strong enough to cover for national duty without a significant quality drop. Pirates, Heathens, and Walukuba are not three-deep in every position at 7s quality. They are built around a core of players who carry both the club and the national team simultaneously. When the national team takes those players away for a weekend, the club shrinks to something much closer to what Rams can match.
This is the amateur setting problem stated plainly. Professional clubs in professional leagues do not lose their competitive character when five players go on international duty because they have fifteen more of comparable quality waiting. Uganda’s top clubs lose their competitive character when those players leave because there are not fifteen more. There are five or six, and then a drop. And on a weekend when those five or six are in Diani Beach playing Driftwood 7s against Kenyan clubs, the remaining core is suddenly beatable by a second-tier 15s side. Luckily, the tournament didn’t have invitational sides like Impis that are silently building in a barely functional CURA.
The national team dimension makes this sharper still. Uganda sent a squad to Driftwood Sevens on the Kenyan coast and, going by the results, they could not properly compete with Kenyan clubs. So we have a situation where the national team took the best 7s players from the domestic competition, weakened the league’s flagship clubs, compromised the integrity of the domestic stop, and then could not win the tournament that justified all of that disruption. The cost was paid domestically, for sure. The return was not collected over the border ohh wait, East African community is one big country.
On a serious note, it is not a one-weekend problem. That is a calendar problem, a depth problem, a development problem, and ultimately a resources problem all arriving at the same junction simultaneously. That was the weekend. If you put vibes aside and put rugby first, in Uganda it is now normal for rugby to be the thing that happens on the side of meets and nyigos.
The scheduling of a domestic 7s series stop on the same weekend as the national team was traveling is not an oversight. It is a governance decision, and it is one that needs to change. Either the domestic calendar is designed to accommodate national team windows, as professional leagues around the world do as a matter of basic planning, or the domestic competition becomes a lottery where results are determined as much by which clubs lost players to the national team as by which clubs trained harder and played better.
Rams won the stop and they deserved it. But the story of Stop 3 is not really about Rams. It is about a competition that is being run on foundations that are not yet strong enough to support what it is trying to be. Alternatively, national team players and all those players part of the 7s project in Uganda should be ring-fenced in a certain order to allow the field to be open. Maybe then Rams and the rest at its level will be more competitive. I had forgotten that 7s is not even rugby on this whole rant.
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<a href="https://benjaminwatchblog.wordpress.com/">Benjamin WATCH blog</a>, Community Manager <a href="http://afrobloggers.org.zw/">Afrobloggers</a>, Social Media and Africa Lead Coordinator Africaniwa, Real Estate enthusiast, Team Manager <a href="https://kyambogorugby.com/">Kyambogo Rugby </a>
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