Kenyan women up training ahead of Dubai 7s series

National women’s rugby team’s Sylvia Kavere and captain Doreen Remor train at RFU Club, Nairobi. [PHOTO: JONAH ONYANGO/STANDARD]

By Rebecca Gichana

After an impressive performance in the World Cup qualifiers in Morocco a couple of weeks ago, the national women’s rugby Sevens team has shifted focus on Dubai series.

Kenya has intensified training at the Kenya Rugby Football Union grounds in preparation for next month’s Dubai series.

According to coach Kevin Wambua, Kenya’s 14-10 loss to Tunisia in Morocco, might have resulted due to lack of a local women’s league in the country.

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“Countries like Tunisia and Zambia have women’s rugby leagues and selecting players for the national team is easy. Besides, most of their players are experienced compared to our girls,” Wambua told FeverPitch.

“Most of the time, we recruit players and start training them on the basics. If we can get a competitive league with more than seven teams, this will increase the number of players available for national team selection. This will be good in the development of women’s rugby,” added Wambua.

“We have assembled 40 players from which we will pick 18 for the Dubai leg preparations. It will be easier to work with small number of players before we travel. We have been working on sprints and endurance and there is much improvement. We have started earlier preparations because we know it won’t be an easier task in Dubai. We still don’t know our opponents but I believe if we start working on the mistakes we made in Morocco, our performance will improve,” Wambua told FeverPitch.

According to Wambua, the team is improving by the day and performances from the team captain Doreen Remoul,  and Angela Olum, will steer the team to greater performances come November.

While in Morocco, Kenya beat hosts 34-0, went ahead to beat Zambia 36-0, Senegal 7-0 and Tunisia 7-5 in the preliminaries. Tunisia, however, later shocked Kenya in the finals.