Rugby Cranes 7s team faces more tests in South Africa

Uganda’s Rugby Sevens side will be taking a break now, following their triumph at the Africa Ruby Sevens Championships that concluded on Sunday, July 7 in Mauritius.

Uganda defeated South Africa 20-17 to lift a fourth Africa Sevens title since the first in 2016. However, the break will be a short one, as they will quickly be stepping up preparations to compete in an invitational sevens tournament in South Africa during the month of September.

Soon after that, Uganda’s charges will be heading to Kenya for the Safari Sevens in October, to wind up the year. This is geared towards ensuring that Uganda has more test games, to enable them close the gap on South Africa.

The victory on Sunday was Uganda’s second over South Africa in a period of a week. It was the first time this was happening and, therefore, very important to coach Tolbert Onyango’scharges, as he credited them for the resilience and consistency during a two-week period in Mauritius.

Last year, during the Africa Sevens Cup in Zimbabwe, South Africa beat Uganda in the semi-finals, which they followed up with a recent win during the 2024 repechage tournament in France at the quarter-final stage last month.

To break a team’s stranglehold over the other is not necessarily easy especially when it involves a country like South Africa, who are a force to reckon with in international rugby. South Africa are not 15s rugby world champions by accident, whose ripple effect has also seen them boss affairs in Sevens rugby to a big extent in recent years.

Therefore, any victory that Uganda can record over them, is inevitably morale boosting, psychologically. The fear and aura of invincibility must now have subsided in the mind of Uganda’s players for now, even with the consideration that South Africa fielded a weakened side.

This is after their main side won the Olympics qualifiers. Nonetheless, South Africa still summoned a few members from their first team such as Riccardo Duarte, to bolster their second team during the second week of the Mauritius Sevens.

But the show of character Uganda displayed, to fight back and win it late through tournament MVP Aaron Ofoyrwoth’s kick, was commendable fighting spirit, noted Isaac Lutwama, the chief executive officer of the Uganda Rugby Union.

Ultimately, Uganda secured a berth to compete at next year’s HSBC challenger series, which will keep the players on contract. This is an opportunity to concentrate on rugby and improve professionally.

Furthermore, Uganda’s target is to reach the HSBC World Series, where the likes of Australia, South Africa, Fiji and New Zealand compete so that they can receive the annual cash boost of £250,000 (Shs 1.2 billion) from World Rugby.