Rugby team dream ends

Mar 17, 2006

UGANDA’s rugby 7s dream run was brought to an end by neighbours Kenya yesterday. The Kenyans ran in five tries without reply to deny the crowd favourites what would have been a historic finals appearance on their debut at the Commonwealth Games.

Rugby 7s Bowl
Quarterfinals
Uganda 24 Sri Lanka12
Semifinals
Kenya 29 Uganda 0
Boxing Light welter preliminaries Akora 10 Kevin Vizier 26

UGANDA’s rugby 7s dream run was brought to an end by neighbours Kenya yesterday. The Kenyans ran in five tries without reply to deny the crowd favourites what would have been a historic finals appearance on their debut at the Commonwealth Games.

Tolbert Onyango’s boys finally ran out of steam at the hands of his countrymen to bring an end to a glorious run that included a stunning victory over world ranked Tonga that left the whole of Australia’s second largest city Melbourne talking.

Uganda stormed the wooden spoon tournament for third and fourth place finishers quarterfinals by stunning Sri Lanka.

The team, captained by leading try scorer Allan Musoke, again got another standing ovation at the packed Telstra covered roof 35,000 seater stadium.

Kenya, ranked 10th in 7s in the world, beat Samoa to take the Bowl title.

It was not a good day for the rest of the Ugandan contingent despite the arrival of the allowances due to them.

NCS chief Jasper Aligawesa confirmed the players had got their allowances. “Everything is okay now. We will give everyone what is due to him or her this afternoon,” he said here, confirming that the princess and prince of Ugandan track, Dorcus Inzikuru and Boniface Kiprop are in town.

The biggest disappointment came in the ring, where light welterweight Edward Akora found a mountain in Canadian Kevin Vizier who won 26-10. The Canadian found his target, which was unfortunately Akora’s head a little too often, and was 14-5 up after two rounds.

A wild swinging Akora then tried to look for a punch, but suffered more, with Vizier getting 10 points to 2 in the third round before fighting safe in the fourth, the only round he lost.

“Akora was a shadow of himself. I don’t know what happened, maybe he was nervous” coach Dick Katende said.

Nervous? That must be the only explanation for the poor showing.

The teenage table tennis girls are basically providing practice for the women. The spin of the Chinese and Korean-born Australians and New Zealanders, was hard to handle. The badminton side suffered at the hands of the hosts and their neighbours New Zealand. None of the Ugandans are ranked in the top 100 in the world, and that explains the results there.

Weightlifter Moses Kimbowa finished 16th after lifting a total of 211kgs while Natasha Ratter remained the most successful swimmer, at least, advancing from the preliminary races, but they were not enough to see her advance when she joined the big girls.

Today’s schedule basically concludes the team events in table tennis and badminton, with all focus on the start tomorrow of the track and field programme. It is time for Inzzi to do her thing.
Ends

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