Quick round up of 2008

the lady cranes 7's team qualified for the inaugural IRB womens rugby world cup 7's to be held in dubai in march 2009.

me (helen buteme), mary kyoita, winnie atyang, christine kizito, prossy nakakande, brenda kayiyi, fortunate irankunda, charlotte mudoola, josephine namayega, aalliya adania, harriet kayonjo and rosenburg kanyunyuzi were the heroines in the world cup qualifying drama that occurred in september 2008.

a 19 woman training squad was assembled in october that had sauda adiru, dorothy nekesa, asha sonko, claire anena, rachel kakaire, agnes nantongo and uganda's track queen justine bayiga in addition to the world cup qualifiers 12 woman squad.

this month, we journeyed to south africa to play in the womens category of the nelson mandela bay sevens as part of their world cup build up. charlotte mudoola (exams), mary kyoita and josephine namayega (injury) were replaced by rachel kakaire, justine bayiga and asha sonko.

in the 6 team tourney we beat eastern province (the top SA womens province team) and the department of correctional services (14 - 00 and 24 - 00) in the pool stages. we then played south africa in a friendly and lost 40 - 00. yikes!!! huge score.

blue bulls gave us a scare in the semis going 10 - 05 up before half time. we made a plucky come back in the second half to win 15 - 10 and met south south africa in the finals. south africa won that game 36 - 00 but scoreline aside, we had made a huge improvement from the first game.

lady cranes had a training session with former south african 7s coach, norman mbiko and hene ncebe, the lady springboks fitness coach on sunday morning. it was a great session and we all loved it.

although we lost heavily to the springboks in both games we learned a lot from the tournament and we will use the experience to become a better team.

we are 'resting' (doing personal training) but we will meet on january 3rd for our first session in the new year.

please keep tracking us as we prepare for dubai.

thanks.

Posting on Lady Cranes renewed

hi all,

i'd taken a brief sabbatical from blogging on the Lady Cranes 7s team but now i'm back. i'll be giving a week by week brief summary on our World Cup preps.

we had taken a christmas/new years break but we resume training on the 3rd january.

i'll keep you posted.