As rugby fraternity, we are mourning the death of Tony Onyango Opondo of KCB Rugby Club who passed on Tuesday 3 March 2020. Onyango collapsed and died at his Ngong residence on Tuesday nigh. His body has been moved to Umash Funeral home.
The tough tackling player was part of the KCB squad that trained yesterday ahead of the Kenya Cup playoffs set for this weekend.
An alumnus of Maseno School, Tony first played for Impala Saracens before joining Strathmore Leos and was part of the Leos squad that reached the 2012/13 cup final . He moved to Homeboyz where he won the 2016 National Sevens Circuit before moving to KCB where he was part of the squad that beat Kabras 23-15 in last season`s Kenya Cup final in Kakamega.
Onyango played for the Kenya national team across all representative levels,earning his first Simba call up under Michael Tank Otieno during the Elgon Cup against Uganda in April 2012 and became a regular under Jerome Paawater , playing for the Simbas upto 2018 at the Rugby World Cup Repechage tournament in Marseille, France.
The origin of rugby football is reputed to be an incident during a game of English school football at Rugby school in Warwickshire in 1823, when William Webb Ellis is said to have picked up the ball and run with it. Although the story may well be apocryphal , it was immortalised at the school with a commemorative plaque that was unveiled in 1895, and the Rugby World Cup trophy is named after Webb Ellis. Rugby football stems from the form of the game played at Rugby School, which former pupils then introduced to their universities.
Former Rugby school student Albert Pell is credited with having formed the first ” football” team while a student at Cambridge University. Major private schools each used different rules during this early period , with former pupils from Rugby and Eton attempting to carry their preferred rules through to their Universities. A significant event in the early development of rugby football was the production of a written set of rules at Rugby School in 1848.
Formed in 1863, the national governing body The Football Association ( FA) began codifying a set of universal football rules. These new rules specifically banned players from running with the ball in hand and also disallowed hacking( kicking players in the shins) , both of which were legal and common tactics under the Rugby Schools rules of the sport. In protest at the imposition of the new rules , the Blackhealth Club left the FA followed by several other clubs that also favoured the ( Rugby Rules). Although these clubs decided to ban hacking soon afterwards, the split was permanent, and the FA codified rules became known as ” association football” whilst the clubs that had favoured the Rugby Rules formed the Rugby Football Union in 1871, and their code became known as ” rugby football”
In 1895, their was a major schism within rugby football in England in which the numerous clubs from Northern England resigned from RFU over the issue of reimbursing players for time lost from their workplaces. The split highlighted the social and class divisions in the sport in England, and led directly to the creation of the separate code of ” rugby league”. The existing sport thereafter took on the name ” rugby union” to differentiate it from rugby league. but both version of the sport are known simply as “rugby” throughout most of the world.
For anybody who loves the Six Nations and want to see European Rugby as strong as possible, France win in Cardiff was a significant moment, possibly the start of something special. I doubt whether France are capable of winning RWC 2023 which they will be hosting but they must bury the memories of nearly a decade of largely poor rugby and bad experiences. Their win over Wales at the principality stadium was the start of that process.
Did you see the young team dancing and jigging with delight and signing their song in the changing room afterwards? it was all over twitter. They are the moment when teams start to get and believe they can take on the world.
Victory did not come easily for them, they fought for it until i saw they deserved it. Scotland will give them plenty to think about, likewise ireland in the last round. They could easily lose one of those matches and that would all be part of the process but i think we can safely say the real France are back
So this time round things will be tough. As Eddie said after the game there is more to come from this side and the sight of wales running out at Twickenham in two weeks time might light the touchpaper.
The Fiji Islands National Rugby Sevens Team competes in the World Rugby Sevens Series, Rugby World Cup Sevens and the Olympics. Fiji Sevens won the gold medal at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Brazil, the countrys first Olympic medal in any event. They are one of the most successful teams in the world .
They have won four World Rugby Sevens Series titles, and two Rugby Sevens World Cups. Fiji Sevens is watched and enjoyed by fans around the world for its style of play the ( Flying Fijians) play with Fijian flair. Their passing and offloads can be unorthodox for traditional rugby coaching, and more similar to basketball style.
Fiji Rugby Union received 4 awards at the 2020 Fiji Sports Awards held at the Vodafone Arena, Suva. The awards included the team of the year awarded to Fijian 7s , best sportsmen of the year which went to Jerry Tuwai, best organisation of the year and coach of the year which was awarded to Gareth.
All Blacks Sevens represents New Zealand at sevens rugby, the abbreviated version of the full 15-man game. The All blacks Sevens team competes regularly in the international HSBC Sevens World Series, which it won for the 12th time in 2014.
The team also won the Rugby World Cup Sevens title in 2001 and 2013 as well as commonwealth Games gold metals in 1998,2002,2006 and 2010.
The All Blacks Sevens team was first selected in 1973 for the Scottish Rugby Union centenary celebrations ( Scotland being the birthplace of the shorter form of the game) and attended a major international tournament for the first time in 1983-the famous Hong Kong Sevens
It has been one of the most successful international sevens team in the world. Their players have won the World Rugby Sevens player of the year on five occasions; Afeleke Pelenise (2007) , DJ Forbes (2008) , Tomasi Cama ( 2012) and Tim Mikkelson (2013). DJ Forbes holds the record for most appearances having appeared in 89 tournaments before retiring at the end of 2017
The first recorded rugby match in Kenya was in 1909 when a team composed of predominantly British officials took on Afrikaaner Settlers in Mombasa. The Rugby Union Of Kenya RFU-K was formed in 1923, the same year when Nairobi District team split to form Harlequins RFC which is not the current club Kenya Harlequins which was formed in 1952 and Nondescripts RFC. Impala RFC, another traditional club was founded in the 1930s. For a number of years, Nondescripts and the Harlequins were two of the best sides in the country and nominated Kenya Rugby when the British Isles went to South Africa for their 1955 tour and their 1962 tour, they played East Africa sides in Nairobi, on the return leg of their journey. The lions won both of the games, 39-12 and 50-0 respectively . The East Africa team played some of the best sides in East Africa.
The East Africa team played some of the best side in the world, including the British Lions in 1955, South Africa in 1961, and wales in 1964. The political struggle in Kenya took a heavy toll on rugby. Not only had the white population failed to promote the game properly amongst the black African and Asian population in Kenya, but when employment restrictions were introduced by the newly independent Kenyan state, they ensured that a number of the white British and South Africans who had been the mainstay of the game previously left the country.
The distances involved world frequently cause big communication problems for Kenyan teams. For example, in 1974, when Nairobi was due to apply Mombasa, the Mombasa team flew to Nairobi, while Nairobi team flew to Mombasa. It was a 950 mile round trip, meaning that the two teams covered nearly 2,000 miles in a game that did’nt happen until the 1970s the sport in Kenya was mainly played by expatriates. This changed once new black clubs, Mean Machine RFC and MWAMBA RFC were formed.
Today, rugby in Kenya is played almost exclusively by indigenous players. Rugby in Kenya is mostly played in Nairobi, only a handful of teams come from outside the capital . The struggle to make Kenyan rugby truly multiracial, and to make it popular was tackled frantically by the KRFU in the post-independence period, with success only coming under its president George Kariuki in the 1980 and 1990s . The former Gloucester player Dave Protherough helped out the KRFU, before his death in the mid- 1990s, and helped the game to thrive once more Kenya founder member of the confederation of African Rugby CAR, which was launched officially in January 1986 , in Tunis. Rugby officials fom Morocco, Segenal ,Ivory Coast, Tanzania, the Seychelles and Madagascar also attended Kenya plays host to the annual Bamburi Rugby Super Series which teams from other East African countries also attended. In 2009, it also hosted the IRB Junior World Trophy, the second tier of the uner-20 world championship structure established in 2008 by the sport governing body, International Rugby Board (IRB) Safari Sevens is an international Ruby Tournament played annually in Nairobi and is the most popular rugby competition in Kenya. Our women also are vry promising.
Fiji claimed their first tittle of World Sevens Series after holding on to defeat South Africa 12-10 in HSBC World Cup Series final which was hosted in Sydney last wekeend.
Man of the match Napolioni Bolaca scored all of Fiji points in the first half as the fijians secured their second win against the Blitzboks in eight days.
Bolaca, who was named in the tournament ” Dream team” alongside Waisea Nacuqu, opened the scoring in the second minute , after pouncing on a ball that skewed out the side of a breakdown.
Fiji sevens won the gold metal at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Brazil, the country’s first Olympic medal in any event.They are one of the most successful teams in the world.
Kenya Shujaa team fail to perform in HSBC World Cup Series Tournament which was hosted in Sydney last weekend
They did not secure any win in the two day tournament as they lost 14-28 to Fiji, 21-26 to wales and 5-19 to New Zealand in the group stages to finish last in pool A. They were ranked as the third best forth team booking the 15th place playoff date against the fourth best team Samoa Where they were beaten 19-12
Shujaa has a total of 26 points to their tally. They are expected to improve and achieve there expectations .
The boys experienced tough game from their opponents but they failed to respond with quick reaction. And that made them to feel the pain.
Fiji were the champions of this tournament where they turned South Africa down 12-10 at the finals
Kobe Bean Bryant was an American professional basketball player. A shooting guard, Bryant played his entire 20-season career in the national basketball Association with the Los Angeles Lakers. He entered the NBA directly from high school and won five NBA championships.He bacame an 18-time all-star, the 2007-08 League MVP and scored 33,643 points.
As sports family we all mourn the death of Kobe Bryant Basketball player (A legend) killed in helicopter crash.
He was born in 23rd August 1978 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in United States.
According to TMZ, Bryant and his second born 13 year old daughter Gianna were travelling to a basketball practice at Bryant’s Mamba Academy in nearby thousand Oaks.
The 2019 Rugby World Cup tournament which was hosted in Japan from 20 September to 2 November,was the ninth edition of the rugby world cup tournament where South Africa were the champions.
Now nations like South Africa have started preparing for 2023 world cup sevens tournament as early as possible since their players are growing old the likes of Cecil afrika and Werner Kok soon they will exit out of the squad
Since the tournament was started in 1987, South Africa and New Zealand are the most successful countries in this tournament since they have won the tournament three times each.
1987 tournament New Zealand were the winners, 1991 Australia won, 1995 South Africa won, 1999 Australia won, 2003 England won, 2007 South Africa won, 2011 New Zealand won, 2015 New Zealand won, finally the last tournament South Africa were the winners
Now we are expecting to see the heck 2023 tournament which was
the heck game 