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Impact Beyond in Uganda – When we speak about rugby in Africa, Uganda might not be the first country to come to mind. However, this union is slowly but surely making its way to the top of the African ranking.
One must say that Uganda is really trying its best to live up to expectations. During the Olympic months of July and August, URU seized the opportunity to raise awareness around rugby with an ambitious, large scale activity program. Indeed, Kampala the capital city of the country took center stage for 5 weeks of intensive rugby sevens from July 16th to August 27th.
12 men’s teams and 4 women’s teams took part in the circuit :
- Women : Thunderbirds – Walukuba Titans – Sharks and Black Panthers
- Men : Betway Kobs – Heathens – Black Pirates – Rhino – Rams – Warriors – Toyota Buffalos – Jinja Hippos – Kyambogo Uni – Sadolin Mongers – Stallions – Impis.
Matches were played on many different fields across the city to allow as many as possible to attend the games. For this occasion, Philip Wokorach, emblematic player from Hima Cement Heathens club and from the Uganda Rugby Cranes was selected as the Rio 2016 Impact Beyond program’s Ambassador.
Following this 7s rugby marathon, the Thunderbirds (women) and the Kobs (men) were declared winners. After a timid start of the tournament from all teams, the last matches were really encouraging for the future. With only 16 days to go before the opening of the 7s Africa Cup, this practice run was a huge opportunity for Uganda. Nevertheless, they know they can’t rest on their laurels if they want to win over the best teams of Africa such as their neighbors from Kenya.
Thanks to social networks, the union managed to attract more than 12,500 fans to the various match venues. They didn’t miss this perfect occasion to introduce fans to various aspects of rugby. Not only with men’ s and women’ s rugby but also with age grade rugby through the Get Into Rugby project in its Stay Phase – the last phase of the program. Many former players also contributed to help the Bantwala charity organisation to fundraise for an orphanage home. Close to 6,300,000 million Ug shs were raised to equip their schools library ! And that’s what rugby is all about..
