Namcos, tough season. What would you reckon prepared you for the task of coaching the national sevens side?
My experience.
For me coaching Impala 7s and Impala 15s was vital in moulding my approach.
Importantly, being in the national team setup for 15 years has helped me know the requirements of the game at international level. This helps me appreciate the demands on the international player. The leadership gained captaining both 7s and 15s teams is key.
In addition, my stint at Exeter Rugby- UK and Army – Sri Lanka helped with the requirements of a professional setup. I valued my interactions with various international coaches, even before taking up the job.
The Kenya Sevens coaching job is a highly sensitive sporting assignment in Kenya. You have just done a season after the interview. If you don’t mind, what was the main concern of your interviewers?
The core of the interview was on my proposal on managing the team into the next Olympics. The four year programme that included the World Cup and the Commonwealth Games in the mid term. I believe all candidates were asked to develop and present along these lines.
The main concern was whether I would be able to institute discipline in the team having played with a few of the players at national or club level.
I believe respect is both ways and discipline has to cut across from the management to the players. During my days as captain, attitude, teamwork and discipline were the pillars of our successes.
I submitted that this philosophy and following it through was adequate to enable me run team discipline.
You always had the ambition to coach Kenya Simbas even though you captained both codes. How did sevens beat fifteens?
(Laughs loudly) At some point in future I will perhaps chase coaching the Simbas in the Rugby World Cup…
The sevens opportunity came about when I was approached by various members of the rugby fraternity to take up the challenge. I thought it an exciting one because Kenya Sevens is playing at the top stage in the world.
Taking it to the level where we become world champions is my dream.
Obviously, this requires a lot of sacrifice. It will significantly involve development of the players, improving their welfare and putting together sustainable structures – in and off pitch, that will ensure we are always in the top eight of any event, whilst playing our brand of kenya rugby, in the run up to the world championship
If you were to pick the one thing that had the biggest influence on the performance of the team, this season, what would it be?
We have worked on the players approach to game, prioritizing what’s important – winning setpieces, ensuring we are going forward by attacking space or weak defenders, believing in team work – systems and patterns rather than focusing only on particular players.
On many occasions we have come short by very small margins. Look all the way from Dubai to London. A last minute try, missed dropkick or try or even just staying grounded when we are under pressure.
For us to ensure we we move from finishing second or third at the pool stage to a regular first or second next season, we need proper preparations through all the stages.
Especially, we need a good pre-season to work on our condition which was way below standard, upskill our players, and gain even more clarity on our attack and defence.
We need to manage the environment better. There is too much red tape and interference, lapses and delays in receiving resources.
We have to radically depart from how things have been done in handling the team. It will sometimes be brutal but it must be done.
We know it will be awkward for you to answer this in detail but we saw you as a one-man bench for long periods in the season. Did you ask for an assistant coach and strength and condition coach replacement?
Yes, I did. Currently the procedure at the (Kenya Rugby) Union puts the final say on recruitment terms on the Director of Rugby and board. I long gave my recommendation but the positions are still vacant as we speak!
It has been very difficult to try manage a high performance environment without a support team to debate with and sound off ideas.
Looking at some of the challenges we faced we probabaly would have managed differently if we had the right technical staff on board.
If we compare our team to the other ones we compete with in the circuit, we are running a grossly inadequate programme. It is just that the team is very resilient. Many of the inefficiencies are really easy to take out. We need to use our resilience to chase championship not to take care of avoidable mishaps in administration (visibly upset).
Easy Namcos. What would you call as the big improvements in the team from when you took it over?
For me the biggest thing has been in developing a technical culture that is much more professional. We are building tactics and techniques that work for the crop that we have and Kenya.
We are slowly moving to a professional set up, where planning and review is key.
We have raised the objectivity index. We deeply review our rugby stats, our condition, our health. We closely analyze our opponents and match performances.
If you look at our tries this year you can see how the players are expressing themselves.
We saw some close encounters with the best teams like the champions South Africa and England. Why were we unable to close out the matches that were within reach?
Many factors contributed to this. Physical condition was big! We tended to lose the games in the second half. Skills execution. We created many opportunities but our conversion rate was low. It hovered around one in four chances. Some of it involved game management. Option taking at critical moments and errors under no pressure.
Exposing our playmakers to many similar situations, in training and build up tournaments will bridge many of the gaps seen.
Nonetheless, I saw that the rub of the green didn’t favour us in many officiating calls.
After some good performances, like those above, we then collapsed like we did against USA – who we have beaten often recently – and Fiji, in London Sevens. Why is this? What can be done?
It was disappointing and we apologise to Kenyans. That’s not the Shujaa way.
In London; though, we had two bad games Fiji and US and three good ones – South Africa, Wales and Spain.
My analysis after re-looking the games, statistics and gps information (we strap a gps device on all players) in the last two tournaments, we could not do back to back performances.
One reason was conditioning as mentioned above. Many of our players are unfit and tired easily.
Second, disruption in preparations put a further mental and physical strain on the players. The six players who travelled late moved slower. Most of them made uncharacteristic errors. The remaining players tended to overwork to cover. It was a chaotic recipe.
Going forward, to avoid it recurring, people must be held accountable for their actions. We must operate in n proffessional manner. I can assure Kenyans, I will pull no stops to ensure that the logistical lapses do not happen again. The technical set up must be insulated from these costly slip ups.
We have been unable to nail the kickoff receipt and line-out set pieces for some seasons now. What exactly is the problem?
Currently on kick off receipt we are at 63% season average. We need to get to 85% per our benchmark. We have tested new formats that allowed us to improve and be above 75% in the last four tournaments.
We are working to improve the effectivess of our receiving pods, reaction around the ball, and defensive pressure where we lose the ball.
As for lineouts, we only had 23 attack lineouts in our 55 games total. We lost nine. Our target is 100% since they are not many and they give a good attacking platform.
We tend to lose lineouts as the game wears out, as we become tired. I doubt this will be a problem next season.
Note that we also won nine from 66 line-outs in defence.
The coming season is really busy. There is the HSBC World Sevens Series, the Commonwealth Games and the Rugby World Cup Sevens. What three things, in the environment, would you ask for to ready the team?
Hehe! I have four critical things
First, improve player welfare . We need to work on their package and pay them over a longer preparations period.
We need to have a full complement of the management team before we begin pre-season. This will enable a full and proper season review and plan for the whole coming season.
The pre-season preparations that include match practice tournamnents must start on time. We can’t gamble again.
Equipment. Physio, gym and rugby equipment need be onsite before we start. I will detail precisely what we need, at the minimum. Last year we were depending on tournament balls for training, we ran out of supplements and so on.
From management?
Once we fill the vacant positions, we will restructure, according to our season review. We will up-skill staff continuously to ensure delivery to players. There will be rigorous on-going review.
And the players?
Commitment, self awareness, ambition, growth and execution.
The fans are baying for your blood. What message would you like to send them?
We thank all the fans especially the ones who take their time to travel with the team. We really appreciate. Your interest in the performance drives us to work harder and smarter to achieve more.
It is easy to look at the results, read opinions in the ‘popular press’ and assume things have imploded.
I assure that we are on the right track and have a winning formula. We will deliver!
Key for us this season was to lay the foundation in terms of culture, structures and strategies that would allow the Kenya brand of rugby to leap forward. We have that foundation and hope that the preparations will be seamless because some aspects are outside the immediate control of the team.
Do you have a good enough grip and attention of the players?
I believe I have. I use a bottom up approach in how I lead the team. Ideas and strategies are built from the ground up. We involve players a lot in planning and review. We monitor players to ensure they are constantly improving and are meeting their life, career and rugby goals. It is cutting edge player-centred.
We have seen a playing Namcos with huge influence and presence on the field. Will we now see a similar Namcos coach in the coming season?
I lead by example, I am what you see and I believe in teamwork. Rest assured that the team will have a huge presence on the pitch.