Month: June 2021

Categories
70's 80's

Miro RFC: Those magnificent flying minds

Miro vs Blackheath, 1979. Miro won 39-12
Miro vs Blackheath, 1979. Miro won 39-12

Originally published in the East African , October 3-9, 2011.


On April , 1974, a brief inviting all African rugby players to meet for the formation of an African rugby team appeared in the sports pages of the Nation newspaper. Thirty one players turned up.
Later, a headline in the same paper later read. “All Blacks Rugby Team Formed.”
The team would operate as an invitational rugby side, and the players would remain affiliated to their clubs.
The men behind the idea as reported were Bill Okwirry, George Kariuki, and Joe Achungu.

Miro’s first big game was played against Roma Al Gida, a first division Italian club side, in 1976.
Roma Al Gida played several representative teams while on tour in Kenya, including Scorpions – whom they beat 16-13 – and East Africa XV.

Miro, playing their open rugby brand, beat Roma Al Gida 20-12, scoring three tries through Matsalia, Ben Mukuria and Tom Oketch. All Roma’s points came from 4 penalties. Miro had proved they could win.

An article in the dailies the following day read,” Miro, an all African rugby team, scored a great victory over the touring Italian side, Roma Algida. Miro played excellent open rugby and fully merited their win.”
Roma went on to draw 9-9 with East Africa.
Miro was not without controversy. Questions were raised about the selection of the team, with some members saying only Africans should be named. Other members, not wanting to appear reverse racist, wanted a few ‘supportive’ Europeans on the side.
The administrators of the game, the Kenya Rugby Football Union and the Rugby Football Union of East Africa had done plenty to ensure a transition of the game from European to African, setting up competitions to increase the player base. On the representative scene players like Ted Kabetu, Chris Onsotti and John Muhato were playing for the representative sides. The game had opened up to Africans, and now they wanted full representation at the highest level.
In May 1979 Blackheath RFC a major London club side, toured Kenya for the second time since 1966.
The Scorpions, an invitational side, put up a commendable fight, drawing 17-17 with Blackheath.
Miro raised the bar. ‘Miro Sink Blackheath’, Frank Ojiambo’s article read the day after the match, “The All-African invitation rugby side, Miro R.F.C swamped the fancied British club side, Blackheath, 32-19 yesterday, in perhaps the most exciting rugby friendly to be played in Kenya.”
Richard Njoba, Miro secretary remembers the game with nostalgia, “It was one of the most exciting games played in the country, 80 minutes running rugby. I remember a couple of occasions when the ball was run from behind our posts, against an English first division team. Tries were scored, and we won. And that was the last time there was a question about Africans being selected to play international sides.”
Despite all the politics, Miro had proved its caliber again.
Later that July, the East African ‘Tuskers’ left Nairobi for a 4 game tour of Zambia. Of the 23 man squad, 19 were African. The Tuskers lost 3 games and won the most important: against the Zambia National side.
Beth Omolo remembers the game against Zambia. “That was the first time we had heard the Kenyan national anthem played.” The Tuskers won 21-13. It was the first time the Zambians had lost to a team from East Africa since 1954.
On July 5, 1980, a Kenyan XV, based on selection of Kenyan citizens, played against Zambia in Nairobi. The Zambians had travelled to try and avenge the 1979 defeat by the Tuskers. Kenya won the match 23-10.
Three weeks after Kenya beat Zambia as a national team, Miro was slotted to play a game against the visiting London Metropolitan Police side from the UK.
Earlier that year, the British Lions toured South Africa, and yet Britain was a signatory to the 1977 Gleneagles Agreement in which Commonwealth governments agreed to discourage sporting contacts with South Africa.
Mean Machine and Mwamba boycotted the tour to protest against Britain’s sporting links with apartheid South Africa.

Miro raised a side to play Metropolitan Police, but suffered a 40-9 defeat. Reports in the Daily Nation the next day called the Miro side ‘makeshift’. Several Mwamba and Mean Machine players did not show up.
Godfrey ‘Chief’ Edebe, the Miro chairman who played in the 1979 Miro vs. Blackheath game, had a different view of the situation,” Our brief (as Miro) was to get a game against touring sides, and we got a game against Met Police. How else could you judge the ability of Miro, to see how far we had come up? We have had a lot of politics in rugby.”
Miro faded away; its sunset clouded by politics, eclipsed by a new dawn of Kenyan representative rugby. Its objective had been achieved.

Categories
60's 70's 80's 90's Pre-independence

The Enterprise Cup: Standing The Test of Time

The Original Enterprise Cup
The Enterprise Cup, presented to the Rugby Football Union - Kenya by a tour party from the HMS Enterprise in 1928.
The Enterprise Cup, presented to the Rugby Football Union – Kenya by a tour party from the HMS Enterprise in 1928.

Originally published in the East African, September 12-18 , 2011.

In 1928 a parcel containing a silver goblet arrived at the desk of the Rugby Football Union of Kenya. In the parcel was a silver trophy, a gift from the officers and men from the HMS Enterprise, one of two Echo Class ships in the Royal Navy- to be awarded annually to the winners of an Inter-District championship.

Earlier that year, a rugby team from HMS Enterprise, composed of 30 officers and men, departed for a two week tour of Kenya and Uganda playing Nakuru RFC, Kitale RFC, Kampala RFC, a combined Kericho/Londiani XV, a combined Thika/Ruiru XV, and the Mombasa Sports Club. The ship sailed to Zanzibar, Dar es Salaam and Tanga, playing a total of four more matches in these three ports, thus completing the first rugby tour of all three East African nations by a Royal Naval vessel.

As had been requested by the crew of the ship that had presented the trophy, the competition was inter-territorial, between four teams, Nairobi District, Coast District, Plateau District and Rift Valley District. The first competition played in 1930 was won by Nairobi, and the following year, by Nairobi North.

In 1933 the format was changed, and clubs could participate under the ‘clubs representing districts’ format, where clubs from Nairobi were allowed to participate as clubs. One of the challenges of the competition was the great distances that had to be covered to make the games possible.

The competition has been played every year since its inception in 1930 to date, with two exceptions: during the second world war years, 1940-46, and to make way for the All Africa Games in 1987 which were held in Nairobi.

Enterprise Cup Champions
The list of champions tells the trophies history of the game in Kenya:
Nondescripts R.F.C (24), Impala R.F.C.(10), Kenya Harlequin F.C. (8), Nakuru R.F.C. (6), Eldoret R.F.C. (7), Kampala R.F.C. (4), Mwamba R.F.C. (3), Kenya Commercial Bank R.F.C. (2), West Kenya (1), Nairobi North (1), Nairobi District (1), Mombasa Sports Club (1), Kitale R.F.C.(1), Kenya Police R.F.C. (1) and Coast Province (1). The trophy has been shared twice.

The Enterprise cup, in standing the test of time, is the fibre of rugby competition in the region. As the game of rugby achieved wider participation, several other trophies were presented to support and widen the reach of rugby by association with the Enterprise cup.

In 1954, zones were created to counter the challenge of long distances covered. Two zones, would each provide a finalist. In 1960 the format was again changed. Four zones, Uganda, West Kenya, Central Province (Nairobi and surrounding districts) and Northern Province (Tanganyika and Coast), would each provide one semi finalist, by whatever means each zone decided on. A few of the trophies and competitions associated with the Enterprise cup are listed below

The Jones Cup
Initially started as a sevens cup in 1953, the method of playing the trophy was changed and awarded to the winners of the fifteen a side West Kenya Enterprise cup zone.

The Nairobi District Championship
For a period before 1959, the top three teams of the NDC would play in a competition together with teams from Northern Province (Norther n Tanganyika) and Coast Province to produce an Eastern Zone finalist for the Enterprise cup.

The Uganda Cup
Started in 1962, The winner of the Uganda cup qualified as the Uganda semi-finalist to the Enterprise cup.

The Soy Cup
The Soy cup was introduced in West Kenya in 1960, to give opportunity to ‘A’ sides and weaker teams that could not participate in the Western Kenya Jones Cup.

The Eric Shirley Shield
In 1962, the Kenya Central Province R.F.U. introduced an ‘A’ league competition on much the same lines as the successful Soy Cup competition.

The Inter Provincial Championship
In 1955 the RFUEA introduced an inter provincial championship, after the ‘clubs representing districts’ format prevailed as the Enterprise competition format. West Kenya and Uganda would produce one finalist, and Kenya Central province, Tanganyika Norther n Province and Coast Province the other. The tournament was played until 1972, by which time the Provincial Unions had made way for the Kenya Rugby Football Union in 1970.

The Mwamba Cup
Started in 1980 as a knockout competition for ‘A’ sides, or second teams, the Mwamba cup final is played as a curtain raiser to the Enterprise Cup final. Mwamba ‘A’ were the inaugural winners beating Mean Machine ‘A’ 16-10.

81 years old and 73 competitions later, the Enterprise Cup Competition still goes strong. If the trophy could tell a tale, it would be the evolution of the game, and the history of rugby in East Africa.

Categories
Personalities

From Van Riebeck School to Ndururumo High- Afrikaner to Kenyan

A plaque on the school buildings
The Dutch Reform Church, Nyahururu, built in 1952.

This article was originally published in the East Africa magazine, October 10-16, 2011.

While reading the schools chapter in the book ‘Rugby Football in East Africa 1909-1959’, four secondary schools are mentioned: Duke of York School, now Lenana School which started playing rugby in 1949, Prince of Wales, now Nairobi School, (1931), Saint Mary’s School (1939) and Van Riebeck School at Thompson’s Falls, now Nyahururu.

Not having heard of Van Riebeck School before, my curiosity got the better of me. Travelling up to Nyahururu, the first place I went to was Thompson’s Falls, after which the town was previously named, to take in the beautiful view and to ask for directions. Six people later, I still had no clue as to Van Riebeck’s whereabouts. Seven was indeed the lucky number, and I was told to look out for the AIC Church on Rumuruti Road, and the school would be right across the road from it.

Arriving at my destination felt like I had been taken back in time. The AIC Church is a magnificent building with characteristic Dutch architecture. The buildings and grounds are in an immaculate state. The church was originally the Dutch Reformed Church, built by the Afrikaner community that settled in Kenya early last century.
The British gave them farming land on the edge of the Rift Valley in the area in which the modern town of Eldoret was later founded.
The Boers came to be known as “kaburu” by the locals. The colonial government later opened up an area south of Thompsons Falls for the Boer community. By settling the Boers in this particular area, the colonial government intended to use the Afrikaner community as a barrier between the antagonistic Nandi and European settler communities.
As part of Boer life, several congregations of the Dutch Reformed Church were established in Kenya, the first congregation being established at the foot of the Menengai Crater in Nakuru in 1908. Willem de Klerk, a church minister and grandfather of the former South African president FW de Klerk, used to visit some of the congregations.
FW de Klerk visited Eldoret in 1991.
The Boer community made up about half of the settler community in nearby Uasin Gishu and by 1960 were growing 60 percent of Kenya’s wheat.
Two weeks to Kenya’s independence in 1963, the South African embassy in Kenya was closed. An estimated 3,000 Afrikaners left Kenya, leaving about 300 behind. By 1965 postal services with South Africa were stopped, and by 1967, the government stopped issuing visas to Kenyan visitors. In the same year, the last church service was held at the Dutch Reformed Church in Nyahururu.
The British government had given the Kenya government money to buy back farms from settlers at independence; many sold their farms in this way and headed back to South Africa.
The few that remained were determined to stay on, but eventually left as government bureaucracy tightened.
Van Riebeck changed its name to Ndururumo High School. From the size of the football field, with plenty of grass behind the goalposts, rugby was played here.
One of the old buildings has a plaque with the inscription in Afrikaner language,’ TOT EER VAN GOD EN TOT VAN DE OPKOMENDE GESLAG, 7 April 1952’. Translated, it means,’ TO GOD AND TO THE COMING GENERATION’. The Boer community had meant to stay but African independence frightened them away.
The school was built in 1951 by Boer settlers for both boys and girls, and named after Jan Van Riebeck, considered the Dutch Afrikaner founding father who landed in Cape Town, South Africa. The school was managed by the Dutch Reformed Church and followed the Transvaal Education departments curriculum.
In 1963, the school was bought by a group of protestant churches under the name Christian Churches Educational Association and was renamed Thompson’s Falls High School. In 1964, the school was opened to Arican students. The chairman of the board of governors was former President Daniel Arap Moi, then the chairman of the Kenya African Democratic Union
It was one of the first co-educational schools in Kenya besides Nakuru High School, starting with 25 boys and 25 girls, and four missionary teachers. In 1975, the school changed its name from CCEA Thompson’s Falls High School to its current name, Ndururumo High School.
Fanie Kruger, one of the last Boers farming in Kenya, knew of Van Riebeck School. “If you wanted hard core rugby, that’s where it was, at Van Riebeck School. A friend of mine, Robin Elliot. His father was English, and so was not a full Afrikaner. He could only have survived there because he was a strong character. That was a hard core team. They were tough guys.”

Categories
80's 90's

Kenya’s springboard to the game’s international elite

The cover of the first Safari Sevens tournament brochure, June 1996

Original article published in the Daily Nation, Friday, September 20, 2013 .

The Safari Sevens first event brochure.

It isn’t very clear where the Safari Sevens idea was first mooted. Some sources say the idea was first voiced at a nightclub at the International Casino complex, on Nairobi’s Museum Hill.

Other sources say the idea was conceptualised at the pink walled Muthaiga Club, across the road from Muthaiga Golf Club. The two meetings might even have occurred on the same day, but that isn’t very clear. Something that is crystal though is that Robin Cahill led the conversation.

Cahill, in his senior years,  often dressed in the unspoken settler uniform consisting tan pants and a work shirt, was a founder of the ‘new’ Rugby Patrons Society. It was the original  Patron’s Society that provided financial support for the building of the RFUEA Grounds back in 1954-55.  Reorganised again in 1988, it had quietly continued to provide support for Kenyan rugby.

“Cahill drove the point home,” recalls Dennis Awori, a former chairman of the Kenya Rugby Football Union. “He said we needed a tournament, organised separately from the KRFU, a high profile meeting that Kenya would win even with the invitation of strong sides. 

“He came up with the idea of the sevens, and the tag, Safari Sevens. We followed that up, and two years later, in 1996, we had the first Safari Sevens tournament.”

It could have been that Cahill was selling the international sevens idea to separate rugby influencers: to members of the KRFU board at one forum, and the members of the Patrons Society, a quiet group of Kenyan Rugby supporters, at another. 

An instant success

Cahill’s sales pitch worked. The Safari Sevens could not have come at a better time. Driven to reality by Robin Cahill, The Patrons Society and the KRFU, the tournament was an instant success. The RFUEA Grounds experienced capacity crowds which were treated to an exciting, international-grade sevens.

When the Safari Sevens gauntlet was thrown down, the real challenge was to the Kenya Sevens team. The response was quicker than expected. In the first year, Kenya only managed to win the inaugural plate competition in 1996, beating Uganda 38-12, while Public School Wanderers, frequent visitors to the Safari sevens for many years, won the main cup.

Initially, it was thought that it would take a few years for the national team to meet the Safari Sevens ‘standard’. But barely a year later, a psyched-up Kenya led by Sammy Khakame, backed by a fanatical crowd, tore the form book to shreds, beating Cumbria School boys 24-21 to lift the main cup trophy.

“Nobody thought that we would win in 1997, not even the administration; everyone was surprised,” said national sevens coach, Ham Onsando.

Around the time the idea of Safari Sevens was mooted, things began clicking. One week after Cahill had shared his international sevens idea, the KRFU ratified a new constitution which created posts for 10 directors and a full time Chief Executive Officer.

“The plan was to have the CEO’s office as the conduit to coordinate and plan all rugby activities,” said Ron Bukusi, the first KRFU CEO. The new office was exactly what was required to coordinate the new tournament.

Stroke of fortune

A wind of fortune, the Safari Sevens provided a springboard to the International Rugby Board’s World Sevens Series which had been launched in 1999, three years after the first Safari Sevens. 

At first, Kenya only played in the Dubai and South Africa legs of the series. Kenya would later become a core member of the series, taking part in all the IRB Sevens legs from 2004. 

“When the World Sevens series started in 1999, Kenya was already on the international map,” says Herbert Mwachiro who, for years, was the ‘voice’ of the Safari Sevens. 

In 2000, the Safari Sevens doubled up as an Africa qualifying tournament for the 2001 Sevens World Cup in Argentina. Inspired, once again, by a fanatical support base, Kenya beat Namibia 14-7 in a close semi-final to qualify for the World cup finals, along with Zimbabwe. Paul Murunga, who scored both of Kenya’s tries against Namibia, has vivid memories.

“I tried to talk to Eric Kibe, our assistant coach, after the game but my words stuck in my mouth. I was speechless. It took a while for me to understand the reality that we had qualified for the World Cup.”

It was not the first time that Kenya had tried to qualify for the Sevens World Cup. Kenya had fallen short at the inaugural 1993 qualifiers in Italy, and the 1996 qualifiers in Dubai. 

Since the 2001 qualifier, Kenya Sevens has been on a roll, and has qualified for all four World Cup finals; Argentina 2001, Hong Kong 2005, Dubai in 2009 and Moscow in June this year.

The Safari Sevens brought into current view the efforts of Watembezi Pacesetters RFC, a Kenyan touring team of rugby enthusiasts, who won the Dubai sevens in 1982 and 83, landing an invite to the 1987 Hong Kong sevens to play as Kenya for the first time.

“The Safari Sevens has been our food basket,” says Benjamin Ayimba, a former Kenya sevens player who coached Kenya to its highest point, the semi-finals of the 2009 World cup held in Dubai. To anyone who understand rugby, there couldn’t be a better platform to grow rugby than a regular international contest right at home. 

The path to the sevens national team is quite straightforward. Represent your club at the national sevens circuit, appear for a team in the Safari Sevens and get your call up to the national side. 

Mitch Ocholla was awarded his call up to the 2001 World Cup Sevens squad after a blistering performance at the Safari Sevens in 2000. “I knew I had to perform at the Safari Sevens,” recalls Ocholla. “That was my one chance to get recognised.”

Exponential growth

In 1999, Ronald Bukusi, the KRFU CEO, oversaw a sweeping change to local sevens rugby. All the local sevens tournaments were organised into a national circuit where clubs could focus all resources and players to a dedicated sevens period. 

Competitions adopted the two-day format in which teams only play three games a day, providing a layered competition where teams found their competition level on day two based on their performance on the first day.

A dedicated sevens circuit provided rapid growth at club level, increasing exponentially the number of participating teams and clubs country-wide. The feeder system to club competition is similarly efficient. 

Schools rugby was originally a preserve of schools within Nairobi and selected schools outside Nairobi in the 60’s to 80’s, competing mainly for the RFUEA Sevens and John Andrews Sevens trophies. 

In 2004, the Kenya Secondary School Sports Association, KSSSA admitted the sevens version to its annual competition after admitting the fifteens version in 1990. KSSSA competition has had significant impact on rugby in Kenya; today, any secondary school in the country can compete for the coveted KSSSA rugby trophy, which provides a clear route for players to proceed to international arenas.

In its 18th edition, the Safaricom Sevens crowd can only be contained at the Moi International Sports Centre in Kasarani, a sign of its growth from level to level, strength to strength. 

This year’s tournament director, Godwin Karuga, has an ambitious plan; to get the Safari Sevens into the highest competition possible – the IRB.

All this, thanks to the idea of the Safari Sevens and its coveted Robin Cahill Trophy. Hats off, to all the people who have made the Safari Tournament possible.