Red carpet for 7s team as players back coach Mike Friday

Some of the Sevens team players on arrival from Moscow, Thursday.  [PHOTO: ALI ALALE/STANDARD]

By JOHN LAWRENCE

Kenya: Mike Friday will remain the Kenya Rugby Sevens National Team head coach team until his two-year contract with the Kenya Rugby Union (KRU) expires in 2014. KRU Chairman Mwangi Muthee revealed that Friday’s tenure at the helm of the National team was comparable to none in Africa.

“Anyone who touches Mike Friday is shooting directly into my heart. You must not even think of that (firing Friday). If it is working, why change it,” he posed.

Muthee said as a union, they must only seek to make the performance and entire face of rugby look better.

“We must have a working plan and Mike Friday’s mission in Kenya is not accomplished yet. I have given him a second chance and I’d like to ask Kenya Rugby Union, too, to give him a second chance.

Muthee was speaking yesterday at Ole Sereni Hotel during a breakfast reception organised for the Sevens team on their arrival from 2013 IRB Seven World Cup in Moscow where Kenya was eliminated at the semi-final stage by England in a match that was heavily marred by a rainy afternoon  and an overflooded pitch.

The mood at the Sevens Team was similar with players openly expressing their love for the Englishman.

Other than the team captain, Andrew Amonde, who expressed his desire to work with Friday, Willy Ambaka, one of the top players, said everybody in the team wanted Friday to stay.

“We have formed a family and we wouldn’t want to lose any member of the technical bench. All we request the union is that in case of any deficit, they should only beef up the technical bench without taking away what’s already working,” Ambaka told FeverPitch.

The Commissioner for Sports, Gordon Oluoch, also said they would do all in their capacity to ensure smooth running of rugby in Kenya.

“The level of knowledge and information about rugby that the ordinary Kenyans have is all due to the sevens’ performance.

“You are only comparable to the cricket team that reached the semi-finals of the International Cricket World Cup in 2003,” said Oluoch, adding that rugby is no doubt the number one sports team in Kenya today.

During the breakfast, Kenya Airways donated Sh 900,000 cheque as a reward to the players and also announced that they (Kenya Airways) will renew the Kenya Sevens sponsorship deal for two more years.

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