Nothing funny about AK's 'Comedy of Errors' rendition

What was that poorly scripted show that Athletics Kenya (AK) attempted to stage last week at the Nyayo National Stadium in the name of national trials for the World Youth Championships?

From claims of age cheating to controversial selection criteria that denied some athletes who had attained qualification marks a chance to represent the country next month in Ukraine, the whole thing was one big charade.

So ridiculous was ‘show’ that at one point, a busted age cheat mumbled some inaudible incoherencies in an attempt to state his date of birth infront of cameras.

But the climax of this ‘comedy of errors’ was when AK’s youth sub-committee sidelined four athletes who had attained the World Youth qualifying times from their final team of 20 athletes for reasons only best known to them.

The sight of men’s 400m hurdler Geoffrey Kipkoech blubbering and weeping uncontrollably while lying prostrate on Nyayo Stadium’s tartan track was indeed a heartrending spectacle.

While AK is yet to give an explanation of how ineligible athletes sneaked their way to the starting line with forged birth certificates, the reason they have proffered for excluding Kipkoech and three others sprinters was a tad too wishy-washy.

For one, I don’t buy the idea that selectors must give priority to ‘medal prospects’ at the expense of athletes competing in events that are traditionally not Kenya’s forte.

How do we expect to extend our dominance from the middle and long distance races to the sprints if we don’t give these youngsters an opportunity to compete at the very highest level?

Secondly, AK’s explanation that they had exceeded their ‘allocated quota’ of 20 athletes from the IAAF begs the question; why then did they invite so many competitors in different events in the full knowledge that theirs was a limited quota?

What strikes me as odd is the casual manner with which AK has treated this whole fiasco. The London 2012 debacle came in the backdrop of similar farcical circumstances.

But Kenyans are a people well known for their short memories. We shall resort to the usual blame games if our youngsters (God forbid) fail to deliver the gold medals from Ukraine next month.

Hail the ‘grand gentlemen’ of Kenyan football

The Kenyan media has never established the genesis of the beef between FKF chairman Sam Nyamweya and Cecafa boss Nicholas Musonye.
What is known, though, is that two gentleman don’t see eye to eye. Their extreme distaste for each other is well established from the verbal tirades they have publicly exchanged in the past.
Sometimes, this endless tiff has taken the most outrageous forms; on other occasions, it has been utterly hilarious.
Known for his brash personality, on most of these occasions, Musonye has provided some witty sound bites for nosy members of the Fourth Estate.
Take for example last December when local football authorities threatened to boycott the Cecafa Tusker Senior Challenge Cup after being denied hosting rights in favour of Uganda.
“They (Kenya) are the poorest side in the region. They can stay away if they so wish; we won’t miss them!” Musonye had said, tongue-in-cheek, of course.



Needless to say, FKF eventually came around and a third string Harambee Stars surprised many when they went all the way to the final only to lose 1-2 to hosts and defending champions Uganda.
But I digress. Last week, when this year’s edition of the Cecafa Kagame Cup (the regional tournament for champion clubs) scheduled for North Darfur and South Kordofan in Sudan was rocked by mass withdrawals, it didn’t occur to me that Nyamweya was somehow involved. Not until a seething Musonye spoke out.
“Someone’s team (read ‘Nyamweya’s Harambee Stars’) is already out of the World Cup campaign with two matches to spare and now he finds it convenient to interfere with Cecafa’s issues,” he told a colleague of mine in an off-the-cuff remark.
Apparently, Musonye is convinced that his longtime nemesis has a hand in the rough seas that Cecafa has run into in an attempt to host the tournament in the war-ravaged Sudanese State of Darfur.
Still grappling with Harambee Stars’ botched World Cup qualification bid, Nyamweya is yet to issue a rebuttal. But expect something acerbic if and when he does respond to those allegations.
It’s unfortunate that these two distinguished sons of Kenyan soil seem hell-bent on destroying each other even if it means football suffers as a result. Whatever it takes for Uncle Sam and good old Nick to close ranks, Kenyan football will certainly thank them for it.

Losers in NOCK elections have no moral ground to complain

There is a verse in the Good Book that warns believers against looking at the speck of sawdust in someone else’s eye while making no effort to dislodge the log in their own eyes.

With the conclusion of the NOCK elections – selection would fit the bill in this particular instance – things have gone a full circle for top brass of the various sports federations in the country who have been salivating for a piece of the cake at the multi-billion shillings National Olympics Committee secretariat.

The boot is now on the other foot and the very same officials who are known to have bulldozed their way into office in dubious election exercises not so long ago are the ones shouting at the top of the roof for being shortchanged in the NOCK polls.

I take particular issue with the athletics body and the football federation. Its not lost on our memories that during Athletics Kenya’s recent elections, they employed the same tactic that NOCK used in endorsing some incumbents while at the same time locking out those posing a threat to the old guards.



Football Kenya Federation, on its part, is as dead as a dodo; it has been in comatose for the last hell knows how many years. The long and short of it is that FKF’s inclusion or exclusion from NOCK is of little or no consequence.

Let’s face it. The Olympics, itself is a strange concept to a federation that perennially struggles to send our national team football team across the board to participate in a nondescript tournament going by the name the Cecafa Senior Challenge Cup.

However, two wrongs don’t make a right. By stage managing their elections, NOCK have proved to any one among the citizenry who in still doubt that ours is a country incapable of the simple exercise of counting and tallying votes in elections at whichever level.

All said and done, the entire process was a lose-lose situation for Kenyan sports. Electing new officials, who have done little in uplifting the standards of the respective sports disciplines they head, would have just been as detrimental as maintaining the status quo.

Omondi is a sub-editor with Sporton! Email: soomondi@ke.nationmedia.com

Clubs must learn to take responsibility for their fans’ behaviour

It’s now clear that the Kenyan Premier League and the clubs in the league are completely incapable of controlling crowds at match venues.

I attended Saturday’s match between AFC Leopards and Mathare United and from the events that unfolded after the final whistle, I am now compelled to believe that our local football fans have staged a violent takeover of all the match venues.

The sad thing is that not the clubs, KPL or Football Kenya Federation can do anything about it. Whenever these goons have gone about unleashing terror at match venues to vent out their frustration over reasons only they can explain, all KPL is known for doing is issuing some inane threats, which they don’t execute anyway.

As is always the case, it is the unsuspecting traders, pedestrians and motorists who usually bear the brunt of this public nuisance. The traders whose stalls outsides City Stadium were razed up in the aftermath of Saturday’s match will attest to this.



But it is the clubs that are the masters of passing the buck. Every time things go wrong during matches, the clubs always choose the convenient option of ‘disowning’ their fans as opposed to taking responsibility for the unruly behavior of their benefactors.

Hear out their standard line of absolving themselves from blame:
“Oh! Those trouble makers? Not a single one of them is fan of the club. They are just individuals wearing our replica jerseys with the sole aim of giving us a bad name.”

The irony here is that club branches comprising signed up members is what is currently trending among the fans of the serious teams in the KPL. Yet, the clubs and their members are practically perfect strangers. In time of trouble, neither can recognize the other.

In the final analysis, it matters little whether the perpetrators of hooliganism are actually fans or masqueraders.
The buck stops with the clubs, Kenyan Premier League and Football Kenya Federation in as far as crowd control is concerned. But until this threesome learns to accept responsibility, hooligans will continue having a field day on each and every match day.

SuperSport slept on the job

Kenyan football could easily pass for any other name ranging from boxing, tae kwon do or even karate for the endless verbal and physical fisticuffs that the fans are often treated to.

If it’s not, the endless upheavals within the federation or the intra-club feuds, then it’s the fans themselves settling score the old fashioned way, omundu khu mundu, as AFC Leopards and Gor Mahia fans are often compelled to do.

But the past one week has seen a different kind of a fight in the football realms far removed from what the public is used to.

South African pay television SuperSport is screaming blue murder after their rivals Zuku pulled a fast one on them with that controversial Ingwe TV deal.

As the exclusive Kenyan Premier League broadcast rights holders SuperSports’ ire is quite understandable. But it is the underhand ploys they have resorted to in desperation that have fanned the raging flames.


Using their massive leverage, SuperSport is clearly arm twisting the Kenyan Premier League to coerce AFC Leopards into revoking the deal with suspension threats in the event they fail to comply.

There has been a heated debate on the Daily Nation sports desk over this issue but no one seems to agree with each other.

Give the devil his due. SuperSport have done a great job in lifting the standards of the game since their arrival on these shores some five years ago at a time when Kenyan football was on its death throes. The milestones achieved cannot be gainsaid.

But that said, am afraid it seems SuperSport have also been sleeping on the job in certain aspects. I still don’t understand how a Johnny-come-lately (no offence to Zuku) could beat the moneyed SuperSport in their own turf to a simple idea such as a club TV.

This is something they should have done like yesterday. In the meantime, for their folly they will have to contend with the excellent publicity Zuku will gain from this fallout.

Gone are the days of 'kuchaguliwa bila kupingwa'

Dear readers, allow me to regale you with a political tale from yore. At the height of the infamous Nyayo era, a new phrase, ‘kuchaguliwa bila kupingwa’ entered the Kenyan lexicon.
This was in the wake of the massively rigged 1988 general election that were held under a new queuing system, at the time simply known as ‘mlolongo’ in Kenyan lingo.
The whole exercise was very simple. The various candidates would stand at the head of queues carrying placards bearing their images.
Voters were required to line up behind the candidate of their choice upon which a head count would be conducted by dubious electoral board officials and the results announced pronto.
But Kanu, the ruling party of the day, nay, the only party (baba na mama) at the time had no place for dissidents.
The polls were marred with numerous cases of the notorious Kanu Youth Wingers whipping up voters into line from queues of candidates perceived as being in the bad books of the powers that be to join the queues of the party’s candidates of choice.
To cut a long story short, the whole exercise was a sham.


The tragedy is that rather than resulting in free, fair and transparent polls, the secrecy of ballot boxes having been dispensed with, the 1988 polls ended up being the most flawed elections in the history of independent Kenya.
What am I ranting and raving about? Tuesday’s Athletics Kenya (AK) election brought back the old memories of those days of ‘kuchaguliwa bila kupingwa’ with some members of the athletics body’s top brass assuming office ‘unopposed’.
I don’t know exactly what informed AK’s decision to abolish the chairmanship in favour of a Presidency with four Vice Presidents in it’s new constitution.
But it all reminded me of the stormy Kanu National Delegates Conference of March 18, 2002 in Kasarani where President Daniel Arap Moi, the self-proclaimed ‘professor of politics’ pulled a fast on his overly ambitious Vice President, the late Professor George Saitoti (may his soul rest in peace), by endorsing the creation of four ambiguous posts of party Vice Presidents.
The move ultimately locked out Saitoti from the grand scheme of the Moi succession politics.
It is on this particular occasion that Saitoti made his most famous quote, “There come a time” (sic) that became popular when he passed on in a tragic plane crash on June 10, 2012.

Superstition is just part of the game

It’s strange how a sports-filled weekend is every sports editor and sub editor’s worst nightmare. The newsroom is one cauldron of a pressure cooker with very tight deadlines.
The working hours are often long, odd and irregular. Naturally, things usually get thick and misty on those crazy weekends, like the past one, when you have the final IRB Sevens leg, Manchester United’s coronation and of course the Mashemeji derby all competing for space on the sports pages. It’s not a place for the fainthearted.
So I when at the end of a back breaking day, someone in the newsroom, in total exasperation exclaimed, “This is the most thankless job in the world!” I empathized but at the same time could not suppress my laughter.
It’s on the account of the same that I missed out on my place on the stands as AFC Leopards and Gor Mahia performed the latest rendition of their age long ‘friendly war’.
In anticipation of a long hard day in the office, I made a deliberate effort to make up for the missed opportunity to watch the derby at the stadium by attending Saturday’s top of the table clash between Sofapaka and KCB at the City Stadium.

Without taking anything away from the two teams, by all standards it was an entertaining match but an unworthy substitute for the AFC-Gor showdown.
On the stands, I found myself in the company of a renowned sports presenter with a leading TV station and naturally our chit chat drifted away from action on the pitch to the much anticipated Mashemeji derby.
My affable companion went about regaling me with tales of his encounter with two teams earlier on in the day during the final training sessions at separate locations in the city.
His first stop was Nyayo Stadium where the K’Ogalo camp welcomed him with open arms. Coach Zdravko Loguruisc even had enough time for an exclusive interview!
But it was a different scenario at the Marist Centre in Karen where Leopards were going through their final paces. The players and the technical bench fell short of declaring my journalist friend ‘persona non grata’.
Apparently, a decree has been issued (by hell knows who in Ingwe’s technical bench) that the team should avoid any form of ‘contamination’ ahead of the match.
No prizes for guessing the beleaguered scribe’s ethnic background. Nothing to worry though, it’s all in the spirit of the game. Superstition is an integral part of Kenya’s biggest football league match.