Final touches

Wednesday 17th – Friday 19th September: we checked into hotel equatorial after our Wednesday training session. We found the Tunisians already settled in and at home. we went through our moves on Thursday morning and afternoon and did the final touches on Friday morning. After the Friday session, we had to go through the ice bath. Soggy insisted we all had to get in for one minute. he told the faint hearted to do it in sets of 15 seconds. Winnie and aalliya each did one and a half minutes at one sitting. Fortunate did one minute at one sitting then later got back in and did 2 minutes. Yogi, prossy and rose did their one minute with minimum fuss while Christine did hers in 4 sets of 15 seconds. Kyoita, Brenda, charlotte, kayonjo and I provided the usual drama. kayonjo put in her legs for 5 seconds then got out while Charlotte and kyoita immersed their bodies for 10 seconds then got out while shedding tears. The team tried to convince me that the ice would do my ankles and shoulder a world of good. I sniffed my disbelief and tearfully eyed the ice bath. Brenda looked ready to collapse and also refused to get in. soggy eventually gave up trying to persuade the two of us and kayonjo to get in and kyoita and charlotte to complete their 3 sets of 15 seconds. we went back to the hotel and spent the afternoon relaxing (I got straight into a hot tub of water) and watched dvds of men’s IRB 7s series games for inspiration.

south africa arrived early on friday morning, while zambia around lunch time. kenya, zimbabwe and botswana arrived in the evening. cote d’ivoire and madagascar pulled out at the last minute so a Uganda A team had to assembled so that the teams could be divided into 2 pools of 4. we had our old adversaries tunisia, debutants botswana and zimbabwe. we knew our toughest game would be Tunisia. they had finances that we did not have and had camped in france for one week and then in south Africa for another week before coming to Uganda. the south africans had been touring the world taking part 7's tournaments gasint world class teams . We had camped in jinja (uganda) for 2 days prior to the tournament. All of a sudden our preparations seemed inadequate ...