Mark Ssali
4 June 2011
I t is not so much a case of added responsibility as it is of great opportunity. The Uganda Cranes have been handed an open invitation to put on a show and there is absolutely no reason why they should not take it.
When they take to the Namboole pitch on the latest leg of this journey dubbed ‘date with destiny’, the Cranes will have no option but to take the game to their visitors and produce an attacking display to define this campaign.
Bobby Williamson and his boys need no prompting, but just in a case there is a Ugandan out there who would rather err on the side of caution, here are the grounds for the team pitching camp in Guinea Bissau’s area this afternoon.
The nerves
Even for those who have not been to the training sessions, the relaxed, confident mood in the Cranes camp all week has been well captured by the television cameras and newspaper reports and pictures. It is inevitable though that the nerves will kick in at some point as kickoff looms, a situation which could be compounded by the magnitude of the feat they are on the verge of achieving dawning on individuals or the group.
I remember walking into Coach Laszlo Csaba’s hotel room in Maseru an hour to Uganda’s crucial qualifier against Lesotho in 2007, and the man was in the middle of such an intense pre-game ritual one could have thought he had named himself in the starting line-up! It didn’t help that the game was then postponed and the extra day of waiting got to the coach and his players who were nervous wrecks as they failed to convert the chances for a result that would have put Uganda in the 2008 Afcon finals.
Williamson has never quite betrayed such jitters, and his team has dealt well with pressure up to this point, but the adrenaline is sure to flow and the best way to convert it into positive energy will be to go into attack from the first whistle.
The crowd
One thing that is sure to happen if the Cranes assume attack mode is that what should be a mammoth crowd of near-record proportions will get sucked in immediately and raise the noise to levels that the team should feed off.
Ugandan crowds have in the past been guilty of going quiet and pensive up until the first goal, and on the occasions when it has been long in coming the players have not quite enjoyed the atmosphere of a home game.
Television has been a big help in those stakes with our crowds taking some tips from the ones they see in European football and at the major tournaments, and MTN’s flags, whistles, vuvuzelas, cheerleaders and all else have come in handy. It is easier to work up the crowd now and an early goal, or the repeated promise of one, will do the trick.
The referee
Only if the Cranes become the aggressors will they get the rub of the green that sets home teams apart from their visitors. Every so often one hears complaints on the terraces about referees not cutting the home team enough slack, but respect and leniency are earned not gifted.
This Cranes team knows that the win in Bissau was achieved against the odds, and while they felt that the penalty the West Africans were awarded was soft, the referee will have seen it differently if the home team was attacking relentlessly and the visitors hanging on desperately. Now the boot is on the other foot and, without being consciously and deliberately biased, we all know that referees tend to ‘go with the flow’.
Sekagya’s absence
The near-successes of recent campaigns have been characterised by strong defensive showings and sub-par attacking efforts, and today is great opportunity for the Cranes to change that. It has been three games and three clean sheets so far, and while there have been four goals already the team has the potential to bag many more.
Going into attack today will take significant pressure off a defence that has been under siege for the last two games in Bissau and Nairobi, and in the absence of the model of coolness Ibrahim Sekagya, seeing the ball in the other half will be a welcome sight for Andy Mwesigwa and whoever is chosen as his new partner.
Geoffrey Massa has been in the mood in training, and he will not get a better opportunity establish himself as a goal scorer again. His partner David Obua has the knack for popping up with decisive goals, ditto Geoffrey Sserunkuuma, but if I were in the shoes of either Robert Ssentongo or midfielders Tony Mawejje, Musa Mudde, Vincent Kayizzi, Joseph Kabagambe or Steven Bengo, I would be bursting at the seams to register on the scoresheet today, and then dedicate the goal to my suspended captain.
Message of intent
A deliberate choice to attack, and the goals that this approach is certain to yield, would sure send out a message of intent not just to the opposition of the day but to the other group rivals Angola and Kenya who are likely to fight out another close, low scoring contest in Luanda.
Uganda might sit pretty atop the group, but each one of these rivals must still harbour designs of overhauling the Cranes and stealing a berth at the next year’s finals in Equatorial Guinea and Gabon.
We have suffered more than any one of them however and, having maneuvered our way to the top and given ourselves the best chance of ending years of pain, we have to let the others know that we will not be denied this time.
What better way than to put on a show that will erase any doubts that might still linger?
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