Lessons learned

There is no substitute for experience. We needed to have had build up tournaments before we travelled to Dubai in order to get a feel of other teams, to develop mental toughness and to sort out anything that did not look right. During the world cup, we got feedback from various parties (spectators, coaches & players from other teams) and they all said that we should have won against Italy and Brazil. Against South Africa we were handling them well but let ourselves down with unnecessary errors that the South Africans capitalised on. On the positive side they said that we were a good team and we played better rugby than they had expected but we need to play more games against top sides to get exposure and build confidence. That is the only way that we can develop.

We had set a high target for ourselves (a top 8 finish) which we did not achieve. How do we feel ? Disappointed. Yes, we have come further than any other Ugandan sport but we had hoped to make a bigger impact and we know we could have performed better. However, all is not lost: we have learned valuable lessons and will use this experience to improve our women’s rugby in Uganda. In all, this world cup was a learning curve (a very steep one at that) for us all and we come away knowing that we played against the best and it is possible for us to perform better than we did this time around.