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| Action from the Ngong road derby (photo courtesy of KRU) |
To start off the clubs category, defending champions Machine faced bitter rivals Strathmore in another episode of the Universities derby. The lineups featured a few new faces with Leonard Mugaisi, Polycarp Odiambo and Emmanuel Mavala featuring for Machine, Peter Ocholla starting at 10 for Strathmore. Despite the new faces the passion in this one was never in doubt, Strathmore taking an early 6-0 lead through Ken Andola’s boot, the points coming off a penalty and drop goal. Eschuma would however go into the half time break with a one point lead through a Kevin Gacheru try and George Mutuku conversion. The defending champions came from the break with all cylinders firing, stretching that lead to 12-6 through Elphas Manya. The leos were slowly losing their grip on this one, with the defending champions happy to punish the XXVII crew. George Mutuku with a chairman’s contribution adding 10 points to that lead, from a penalty and conversion to his own try make it 22-6 with 10 minutes to play. By this time Strathmore had already closed the proverbial shop, Anthony Ngera’s try driving the last nail in the Leos coffin, with George Mutuku taking his tally for this game to 14 and final score to 29-6. Machine’s title defence and Floodies mojo are well alive for another week..
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| Action from the KCB vs Nondies game (Photo courtesy of KRU) |
The game started off with Nondies quicker off the blocks winning a penalty that Brian Beckham succesfully kicked over. Before KCB realised what had hit them , Sam Muchai crossed over the line to stretch that lead to 8-0. KCB would finally get into the game, with Ojoe capping his debut with a try, Bonab Were converting to narrow the gap 8-7. The green lions would take the lead into the break, Xavier Makuba grounding the ball off a rolling maul to make it 12-8 at the break. The second half saw Nondies come at the green lions with all they had, Fidel Sinei making it a one point game from a penalty at 11-12. Peter Mutai who had moved to fly half for KCB giving his side some breathing space with a penalty and a sensational drop goal minutes later to make it 11-18. Sinei would increase his tally with a penalty to narrow the gap to 4 points at 18-14. With time quickly running out, it looked like the green lions would hold onto this slight lead despite the red simba’s relentless pressure, Sinei though had other ideas grounding the ball and converting his try to hand the Jamuhuri park side the 21-18 win.
The second half saw Quins pick up the tempo but would shoot themselves down with uncharacteristic errors. This is taking nothing away from Impala who defended resolutely and kept the quartered shirts at bay. It was however Impala who would add to their score with Anthony Nyandigisi going over to make it 10-0. The game looked to be slipping away from Quins’ grip as Impala grew in stature with the clock winding down. This is Quins we are talking about, you write them off at your own peril. Isaac Adimo kicking over the quarterd shirts first points of the game through a penalty to make it a 7 point game. Quins sensing a late come back would finally come to the ball game, camping inside the Impala 22. Again Impala would hold them out, that was until Chris Oduor skipped through a couple of tackles to ground the ball just to the left of the posts with the last play of the game. It was now on Dennis Muhanji’s boot to level the game and take it to extra time. Personally, and I think I speak for mosts of us ‘neutrals’ (and Quins fans) that a little part of us wanted the kick to go in so we could enjoy another 30 minutes of this action. But as we all know by now Muhanji drove his kick wide before the buzzer’s sound filled the air to end that game, 10-8. Deservedly so Impala claiming their first win in the Ngong road derby in a while, and you could tell it by the celebrations. Impala will now face defending champions Machine in the second semi final.
The Kenya sevens team to Australia finally departed after a few hicups, first they lost their kit bags, think the bags fell off the team bus enroute to the airport (Whoever picked them up is one lucky bastard or rather a group of lucky bastards hehe). Then on reaching the JKIA, they were to board a KQ flight to Bangkok, this however was cancelled due to the pilots go slow. Eventually, they did manage to catch a flight, this time to Dubai yesterday evening. Arrived safely in Dubai, waited 4 hours to get one flight to Melbourne via Singapore and as I post this they arrived at Singapore and are now heading to Melbourne. Tough start to the journey as the boys are now close to two days behind schedule, might look gloomy now but I’m sure the guys will raise above this and give us one hell of a showing at the Gold Coast sevens. By the way, this is not the first time Kenya 7s have lost kit bags before a tournament..think it also happened before the World cup…and look how far we got that time, this is a sign people!!
More on the sevens in Friday’s post, but I’ll tell you this much..get as much sleep as you can right now, arrange sleep overs, start sleep training yourself preferably with intervals of three hours cause the local timings for this one are true ‘masaa ya wachawi’ as they always are…here:
1. England vs Kenya 3:30 am
2. Samoa vs Kenya 6:58 am
3. Spain vs Kenya 10:02 am
With that ladies and gents… A big congratulations to Mr. & Mrs. Lavin Asego…. and before I forget a happy belated birthday to the one player that has played for more clubs than any other and is indeed the only player to have featured for all 4 core franchises in the BRSS..Daktari John ‘Meso’ Ahenda may you live to see your secret dream of playing for all clubs in Kenya come to pass..hehe!
KWISHA…..Nimeruka Nje!!!!!!
