By Charles Mutebi

AS life would generously have it, the Uganda Cranes will soon embark on another qualification campaign for the Africa Nations Cup.

In any other sphere of life, the Cranes would have been long discontinued from taking part in the qualifiers. But this is sports – if you fail, you simply try again and that is what the Cranes have done so successfully for the last 34 years.

There is no clear plan to bring long-term success, just a commitment to trying. That is why it is hardly surprising that as the seconds tick away to Uganda’s Nations Cup opener against Congo Brazzaville on 29 February, there is no secret scheme tucked away in the FUFA drawers, no young generation of players waiting to be unleashed.

Just a team that is going to try again. And when we don’t qualify again, some of us will have the audacity to act surprised.

So much has changed for the Cranes in a very short time and the team hasn’t looked so ill-equipped in the last 10 years. David Obua was pushed out, Nistelroy Kizito has retired and Ibrahim Sekagya is headed the same way.

Meanwhile, Bobby Williamson has never looked so weak. Williamson’s refusal to defend Obua and consequent decision to own Lawrence Mulindwa’s wacky dismissal of the striker from the camp on the verge of Uganda’s meeting with Kenya was pathetic.

Watching Williamson in that FUFA press conference claim that it was his decision to axe Obua from the squad for refusing to attend President Yoweri Museveni’s surprise visit to the Cranes was galling. In that moment, it was apparent that Williamson was longer worthy of being seen as his own man, a manager of principles.

Williamson needed Obua, Uganda needed Obua but the Scot could not fight for the best thing. This was Williamson’s biggest test of courage and he flunked it. And then he had the courage to come out with that pitch of a lie.

The move might have gone down well with his boss but imagine what the players think of him now? Imagine what they think when Williamson tells them they have to perform or he will cut them from the team?

I guess something like: ‘Yeah right!’

Good managers understand that the worst thing they can do is appear weak and unprincipled before their players. If a manager says he will not allow anyone else to pick his team and says nothing when that right is interfered with then he loses credibility in the dressing room.

This is why Fabio Capello stepped down as England manager when the FA took the captaincy off John Terry without his permission early this month. The merits of the FA’s decision notwithstanding, Capello should have been given the final say in the Terry affair.

Capello knew that if he had let the FA’s move pass without a response, it would have ultimately undermined him before his players, raising the chances of failure.  

Williamson can convince us all he wants to, but as far as some of us are concerned, the Obua affair exposed him. Whether he can put the incident behind him remains to be seen, after all, it is not only his respectability that needs to be rebuilt. Cranes playing staff is in desperate need of a revolution. That would have been easy to achieve if FUFA could spell ‘under-age football’.  They can’t so it’s left to FUFA’s favourite approach.

Just trying.

How familiar it all appears as the Cranes look back to the future.