Dubai 7s The Review.

After three days of high octane action at the sevens stadium in Dubai, the Kenya sides that represented us there can be proud of what they achieved in the desert city.

Watembezi

The Watembezi pot bellies got off to a great start on their first day of action, winning 17-0 against Jonesy's X-Men, they followed this up with a 28-5 win over the Malta Marauders, before falling 66-0 to the Xodus Steelers. I hear those ones were professional veteran players..despite that loss the watembezi had done enough to progress to the quarter finals, where they beat Bishops Stortford 17-7 to book a slot in the semi final.

The Pot Bellies.

The Watembezi would meet the Richmond Swansea Heavies in that semi final, another professional veterans side. Despite their best efforts, the pot bellies fell to the heavies 31-12 and bowed out of the tournament. A great performance by the Watembezi, and improvement from last year.

Its now time for this team to go fully professional, get a coach, start identifying talent early on to keep this good run going. Supplements and a strength and conditioning programme, regular training will also come in handy in readiness for future tournaments. Who knows, we might even get some of them signed up by these professional veteran sides..

Collated Results
Watembezi 17-0 Jonesy's X-Men
Watembezi 28-5 Malta Marauders
Watembezi 0-66 Xodus Steelers
Watembezi 17-7 Bishops Stortford
Watembezi 12-31 Richmond Swansea Heavies

Kenya Lionesses

The Lionesses, finalists here last year got off to identical 31-7 wins over UAE and Swiss Barbarians, before falling 24-5 to Almaty RFC. They would end their Pool A fixtures on a high with a 24-19 win over the Adler sevens booking them a place in the Cup semi final. This being a two pool format there were no quarter finals, the Lionesses would meet the SA Select side.

Narrowly losing that encounter 19-12, another great performance by Kevin Wambua's charges they will have picked up vital lessons here going forward. 

Collated Results

Kenya Lionesses 31-7 UAE

Kenya Lionesses 31-7 Swiss Barbarians

Kenya Lionesses 5-24 Almaty RFC

Kenya Lionesses  24-19 Adler Sevens  

Kenya Lionesses 12-19 SA Select

Kenya 7s

After barely three weeks with the new management, we finally got to see the side play. From the first glance you could see in many ways that we were looking at an unfinished product.

We struggled in the first match against Portugal, doing just enough to win 10-7. We saw a lot of the ball in that one, doing little with it though. Our defence held up well, you could see that we looked to apply pressure on the ball and it's immediate support. 

The second match was a better showing but we still were not firing on all cylinders, better use of the ball, leading to a 14-5 win against the French. Despite playing with the proverbial hand brake on, we had done enough to progress to the Cup competition, up next was the real test in this pool.

The game against New Zealand was the one that was really going to show us where we were at this point, and show us it did, for about 6 minutes. The all blacks were again dominant at the break down, ruffling our play from that point. They were sharp in attack, managing to punch holes from our indecisions in defence.

The final result was a bit too harsh a judgement, it basically showed how competitive this series has been recently. Once you are caught napping there's no way back, look at what happened to the same All blacks side against Fiji, would you say that was a true reflection of the gap between the sides?

Day 2 and we would meet South Africa, a much better performance by the side, an overall improvement on all departments. We however didn't have enough to see off the Blitz bokke, going down 21-12 at the death. Relegating us to the Plate where we would meet Wales.

Another improved performance saw us forcing the match into sudden death after trailing 14-7 at the break, eventually going down 24-19. With that, we bagged 10 series points, taking our tally to 22 in 6th spot.

Oscar Ayodi in full flight 

It was a good start to this new era, the side can pick up a lot of positives, top of that list is that we looked better in every game. With such a young side, the most important thing here was to pick vital lessons from each game and it looked like we did exactly that.

The senior players in this side, I felt came through in a big way over the two days. The duo of Andrew Amonde and Collins Injera were immense, Injera's contribution a bit more visible, Andrew's contribution in the set pieces can not be over looked.

Injera has had a great two tournaments since he was moved to centre, racking up the tries and at crucial times too. His efforts in Dubai duly awarded with a spot in the tournament's dream team. Apart from the two Oscar Ayodi impressed on the wing, he looked lively on the ball, gave us an extra spark.

Collated Results:

Kenya 10-7 Portugal

Kenya 14-5 France

Kenya 0-40 New Zealand

Kenya 12-21 South Africa

Kenya 19-24 Wales

Going into the third leg, we lose Philip Wamae and Mike Wanjala through injuries with Patrice Agunda jetting back to sit for his exams. The trio are replaced by Dan Skuta, Davis Chenge and Billy Odhiambo, looking at the three replacements it is clear that Treu and Co want to turn the physicality a notch higher.

More on the Nelson Mandela Bay Sevens to come later in the week...but here is a look at the fixtures and timings for our matches :

07/Dec/2013

Kenya vs Spain - 14:34 Hrs

Kenya vs Canada - 17:40 Hrs

Kenya vs South Africa - 20:58 Hrs

With that ladies and gentlemen.....

KWISHA...Nimeruka Nje!!!

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