📸 Zimbabwe win Rugby Africa Cup, Uganda secures fifth place

Rugby Africa Cup results

Final

Zimbabwe 29 Algeria 3

Third Place

Kenya 27 Namibia 38

Fifth place

Uganda 34 Senegal 31

Seventh place

Ivory Coast 25 Burkina Faso 10

Over 110 minutes of rugby were played before Joseph Aredo’s penalty split the posts to give Uganda a hard-fought 34-31 victory over Senegal as they sought to consolidate fifth.

With that, a match that started at noon concluded at 2:20 pm on Sunday with both sets of players dead on their feet.

It was a match in which the Cranes started slow and once again were made to pay by their opponents who pounced and made Ugandans work hard all afternoon. Uganda started the match well even winning an early penalty which gave them a 3-0 lead. Senegal answered with two well-converted tries which put the pressure back on Uganda who had a bad time conceding many penalties which helped Senegal stay ahead of Uganda for most of the 80 minutes.

Uganda’s heroes included try scorers Alex Aturinda, man of the match Timothy Kisiga, and debutant Arnold Ocen. While Uganda has done a good job winning their last two games they have a long way to go.

“We have made ourselves proud. I wouldn’t say we had a slow start. We had moments of loss of concentration and they pounced and scored two quick tries. Kudos to the boys, we made ourselves proud,” stated Kisiga.

Uganda’s defence was caught out early on in the match and they were forced to work their way out of trouble for the second match in a row.

While the team overcame the challenge for the bigger Senegalese pack they had to look intrusively at what they wanted the future to look like for Uganda whose opponents had a lot more to give physically.

“We could have done better in this tournament, especially in the first game. We lost the first game by two points but we were able to fight in the second half. We turned up against Burkina Faso and in this match against Senegal we were able to give other players a runout and they were able to pull it out of the bag,” said Captain Ivan Magomu.

He implores the Union not to stop the work now and continue from where they have stopped. Luckily the team has a few test matches coming up which they hope will come in handy.

“Test Rugby is very tough and I hope our clubs can see how big teams are. We need to now start copying notes. We have to know that what we play here is nothing and we need to get conditioned to face those teams,” he explained.

Kenya lost to Namibia in the third-place playoff in a very entertaining encounter that ended with the former champions winning the match to take third place.

By losing the seventh place playoff, Burkina Faso was relegated from the tier 1A and cannot take part in the qualification tournament for the World Cup next year.

Zimbabwe secure title

Zimbabwe secured the Africa Cup in style with a mammoth 29-3 winning performance against Algeria. The Sables were by far the best team and they looked the part with how well they delivered on the grand stage. Gone was the fearful performance from the Uganda game. They played like a team that had a plan and it worked wonders.

Much like they did against Namibia, they didn’t give their opponents any breathing space. Captain Hilton Mudariki lauded his teammates for securing their second title. They last won it in 2012.

“This is a special moment. The boys have worked hard for this. We knew it would take all the 23 boys who played today and all the 28 boys who made their way to Uganda. We know everyone is going to improve for next year,” said Hilton Mudariki.

 The Sables were very emotional at the final whistle after securing their second title since 2012.