Sevens’ captain harbours hopes: Amonde sees no threat ahead of Rio Olympics Games rugby

Sevens team captain Andrew Amonde says Kenya’s main threat at the Olympics will be themselves.

The Kenya Commercial Bank (KCB) player says if they ‘turn up’ for their matches at the Rio Olympics, then he does not see any problems that can stop them going all the way and standing on the medal podium.

“We cannot talk about the quality of the opponents now as we need to do our part as Kenyans and that is turning up in the first two matches and play our rugby like we did mainly in the Singapore IRB leg, which we won,” the national team prop who plays as a flanker for his club said at the Games Village yesterday.

He said most of the times they have lost matches that they could easily have won was because they sometimes fail to maintain consistency and play at a higher level all the times.

“Our training had gone on well from the time we were at Nandi Bears and also since we came here and I hope that come the day of the competition we will turn up in good shape like we have always done in training,” Amonde said.

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He added that Olympic Games will not be different from the IRB legs as they will be meeting almost all the teams they have played against throughout the sevens season.

Kenya are in the same group with Great Britain, New Zealand and Japan and play their first match against the Britons on August 9 at 6pm Kenyan time before the second game against New Zealand at 11:30pm Kenyan time.

The last match will be against the unpredictable Japan side on August 10 at 6pm, but the results of the opening two matches will be key in determining whether the Singapore leg champions will proceed to the next round or not.

The first match might also prove tricky as Great Britain are expected to field players from Wales and Scotland, who have been competing as individual nations in the IRB series.

“We know our opponents well and it does not matter whether Great Britain will have the advantage of using players from England, Scotland and Wales as we will prepare well for them on the day,” Amonde said.

On his part, fullback Samuel Oliech is happy that he will be among the first rugby Olympians, but will also be keen to help the national side go all the way and pick the top prize of winning gold.“I am happy to be among the first Olympians in rugby as the sport is making its debut at these Olympics,” Oliech told FeverPitch.