Week 4 - Belief

Wednesday 28th January: we did not do the bleep test and had a light training session as the coaches thought we were still fatigued from the camp. They were so right but we still pushed ourselves. The world cup is just 4 weeks away. The Uganda Rugby Union executive committee were around to watch our training session. Afterwards, Andrew Owiny (the chairman) and William Blick (the vice chairman) had a chat with us.

Friday 30th January: another really good session. We’re really coming together. Confidence is way up and there is mounting excitement in the team. Management informed us that we have 2 more camps ahead of us and at some point the intensity of the training we are going through will decrease. But for now, we are keeping our feet firmly on the pedal. The hardest moment for us all will be at the end of this week when 4 of us are dropped. I won’t think about it just now.

Saturday 31st January: the morning started off wet, and got wetter then at midday the sun came out in all its glory. Surprisingly, the pitch was not flooded. I guess it was really thirsty and sucked all the moisture to way below the surface. Though not flooded, the pitch was soft so landing on it was not painful. We started training at 1pm with ball handling. During the ball handling session Soggy asked Justine who was helping her with her passing. She replied that it was me (Helen). For a couple of seconds, Soggy forgot to breathe then he categorically stated, “No way: game reading, tackling, actually anything else to do with rugby, go to Helen but for passing find someone else – either Claire, Rose, Joan or Rachel.” Hmmph. I was rather miffed at that even if it he was right. Rose almost tripped over herself laughing: she would, she has the best passes on the team.

At 2.30pm we played 2 games against Saracens (a division 2 men’s team). They were younger than the guys we usually play against so they were not so much bigger than us but they were still lots faster than us and physically stronger. That said we put a great show against the guys. The coaches fielded 2 different teams and each team scored one try and had 3 tries scored against them. There was lots of support from the stands for us and we are not the only ones starting to believe in ourselves. When the draws first came out, fans told us “Don’t worry. Just go and play”. But now after tracking our progress over the last 2 weeks they believe we measure up to the World Cup standards and now expect a lot from us. Charlotte’s mother told her last week, “Don’t come back without the trophy.”

Hey, it’s wonderful having people who believe in you.