The year when everything went wrong in FUFA

By Joseph OpioFOR any one with a passing interest in soccer, the 2000/2001-soccer season was devoid of anything worth writing home about. Seeing our national team’s unsuccessful efforts to qualify for continental and global events seemed bad enough, but this was compounded by The Cranes’ first round elimination from the Castle Cup they had gone to defend. Then came the final devastating blow. The hastily assembled Cranes side fell by the wayside as Ethiopia took the debased Kagame Cup The writing was on the wall. Uganda had finally lost its ever-weakening grip on regional soccer dominance. With our regional showing nothing but laughable, internal soccer disorganisation was one problem the soccer fraternity would have happily done without.But with Dennis Obua– a paradigm of failure from any dimension–running the show, the soccer league became, for all intents and purposes, violence personified. The former Police supremo failed to get even a toehold on the soccer proceedings in the country. To say that the season, which had started amid great anticipation and a cocktail of promises, was frustrating would be a gross understatement. Even the candid man in Obua would be hard-pressed to remember anything flattering about the season. Soccer fans were treated to wanton outbreaks of violence during matches, punctuated with lackadaisical soccer. Referees were battered for imagined cases of poor officiation. With football matches turning into “footbrawl” encounters, watching them became perilous business, indulged in by either the courageous few or those harbouring suicidal tendencies. The presence of Anti-Riot police gave Ugandan stadia the hallmarks of full-fledged battlegrounds. And with matches having tragic conclusions, a few cynics advised fans to increase life insurance premiums before venturing into the treacherous stadia. Not a lousy idea considering the fact that the NFLC had to sit, with alarming regularity, to decide league fixtures that had been abandoned. The diminishing attendance figures told the tale articulately. At this point, even the most optimistic fan knew that winning a FIFA Fair Play award wasn’t on the cards and Obua was destined for life out of Nakulabye, or was he?The delegates (?) didn’t think so. Though Obua’s ineptitude has achieved legendary status, he was given another chance to continue his already overstayed welcome in Nakulabye. And Uganda’s last days in the soccer sun were rudely cut short.