Mixed results
Alex Njue
A Kenya sevens national rugby team ‘Shujaa’ savoured a 28-10 win over Uganda Cranes to clinch the ‘Migingo Derby’ bragging rights at the Emirates sevens invitational second leg tournament, to register a bright start while their female counterparts the Kenya Lionesses improved on their scores but lost to Canada and France.
Shujaa went ahead to beat Canada 21-10 in their second match and by the time we were going to press, they were set to face France in the final Day One match.
The moment of truth will be today as Shujaa kicks off their quarter-finals clash at 11am having improved on their first day in office as compared to last week where at the same venue, they only managed a single win, drew one and lost one.
Shujaa kicked off the day in style as co-captain Billy Odhiambo surrendered a pass to Vincent Onyala to draw the first blood and youngster Tony Omondi was accurate on his conversion for a 7-0 lead over Uganda.
Willy Ambaka would then feed winger Jacob Ojee for the second touch-down that was converted by Tony Omondi.
The first retaliatory try by the Cranes came at the death of the first half courtesy of one unconverted try by Desire Ayera to bring the scores to 14-5.
On fine-form Odhiambo returned to haul in Cranes winger to score the third try converted by Daniel Taabu to further scores to 21-5.
Taabu then set up Onyala to sprint for Kenya’s fourth try and followed Onyala to make it a perfect conversion in the opener for a 28-5 score.
That was not the end as the Cranes fed off another clever kick that exposed Shujaa once again as the Cranes fed off the chip for a second unconverted try this time it was Adrian Kasito on the score sheet to end the derby 28-10.
The second match against last week’s quarterfinal rival saw Shujaa head to the break in a 14-7 and returned to beat Canada 21-10 in a match Daniel Taabu scored the opener while Onyala scored two tries with the assists coming from Taabu and Jacob Oje.
Taabu then converted two tries while Tony Omondi had one conversion right. Kenya had beaten Canada 21-19 in their first meeting on April 3 in a cup quarter-final meeting.
Uganda on the other hand lost 26-7 to Spain. Uganda was then scheduled to play Canada while Kenya was slated to meet Spain at 4.48pm.
Meanwhile the Kenya Lionesses improved the scores against Canada and France but did not execute past a try in both matches where Janet Okello was the lone try scorer.
Kenya Lionesses lost 22-5 to Canada and 31-7 to France in the second match to leave Lionesses in high spirits for a vengeful final clash against Japan after a narrow affair in the first meeting last week that saw Japan walk away with a 19-14 win.
