RESOLUTION Impala Saracens has moved to realize its succession plan within the technical bench that will steer the team through the rest of the 2016/17 season.
Prior to the 2015/16 season, the Impala Saracens Head Coach the late Erick Situma got confirmed as Rugby Afrique Regional Development Officer. The new responsibilities and travel made his coaching untenable.
The club’s transitional mechanics to ensure smooth operations necessitated the addition of the head coaching duties to that of Director of Rugby held by Fred Ollows.
“I begun to put together the pre season logistics and operations in May 2015 as we looked for Situma’s replacement. Then out of the blue, the chairman then – Oduor Gangla (now KRU Secretary), reckoned ‘Lox, let’s not interrupt pre-season. We’ll resolve the head coach question later’,” muses Ollows.
“It was easy to acquire the taste of coaching the Impala boys. We went to the Floodlit final, losing to KCB. We entered the Kenya Cup league at 6th from the previous season and led the regular season. We eventually lost to Kabras in the final. We were the surprise package of the season. We ended up with eight Kenya trialists from just two the previous season”
“This season, the teams took us more seriously,” laughs Oĺlows.
“We however started with a Floodlit win – picking up our fight with KCB from the 2015 final. For club reasons, we targeted them after that final and haven’t lost to them since.
We were fourth in this season’s league, though, and set up a pre-semi qualifier against Kabras Sugar. We lost the one-score match. Kabras will remain an intriguing match for us having beaten them just once in these last two seasons.
The real joy, though, has been coaching our next tier and mostly young players to a back to back Eric Shirley Shield championship. Watch out for those boys!
In my wider DoR role we managed to pick a sevens trophy which we hadn’t done since 2006″
The club begun the succession orientation by sending the forwards coach Frank Ndong to the global Saracens (UK) Conference. At the tail end of the season, the Kenyan Sarries recruited
Kenya Rugby legend – Oscar Osir, who joined the technical bench as backs and general attack coach. Both Ndong’ and Osir completed their World Rugby Level 2 Coaching Course last weekend. Interestingly, Ollows quality checked the course as World Rugby trainer.
The club has now seen it fit to appoint Ndong to the head coach role for the Enterprise and Mwamba Cup campaigns.
“The two gentlemen will do well. Ndong is Kenya’s most capped forward, has captained Kenya and is a Kenya Cup champion. Oscar was Kenya’s first fully acclaimed international rugby star, has played professional rugby in the UK and is a multi code champion in the Kenyan game. The Impala game, which is now a 1000+ player ecosystem, continues to rise every day,” Ollows adds.
Ollows returns to concentrate fully on his Director of Rugby role, which includes overseeing not only the senior sides, but the Elite Academy and Junior Academy sides. On the murmurs on his authoritarian approach and the discomfort it sometimes causes, he laughs uproariously once again:
“In chasing championship, there’s nowhere to hide. In any case, every home has its ongoing issues to resolve. Nonetheless, the Impala game is in extremely good health”
