POOR ATTITUDE TOWARDS SPORTS BLAMED FOR LOW FOOTBALL DEVELOPMENT IN BUNYORO
By our reporter
MASINDI: Kitara region FUFA delegate, Rogers Byamukama has castigated the poor attitude towards football training among the people of Bunyoro region.
Byamukama, who is also a member of FUFA executive, was passing out the 13 people who had completed a three day beginners goalkeeping course at Masindi stadium in Masindi municipality on Sunday.
This followed a revelation that out of the 13 participants, only two came from Masindi while the rest came from the other regions of the country.
” It is so saddening that despite having conducted the training in Masindi district the people from the area have not embraced it and only two people have come from the district turned up for it”, said Byamukama.
Byamukama noted that the low interest in football training among the people of Bunyoro compared to other regions has seen the region lug behind other regions in football development which has also seen the technical teams of the clubs in the region dominated by people from other regions due to the lack of the required skills by the people from the region.
The course organised by Kitara region coaches’ association, attracted managers of football academies, school teams and football clubs in the country.
Byamukama said that the people of Bunyoro and Masindi in particular should have benefited more from the training than other regions because it was cheaper for them compared to participants from other regions of the country. Each participant paid 200,000 shillings training fee.
The FUFA delegate noted that specialised trainings are part of FUFA’s agenda of making Uganda the number one footballing nation on the continent.
He revealed that the training has started yielding fruits citing qualifying the country for 13 continental and world football tournaments since 2013 including the back to back qualification to AFCON tournament.
He added that deploying instructors and decentralising the training is part of the FUFA’s efforts to ensure Ugandans acquire the skills needed to professionally manage the football game in the country.
The chairperson Kitara Football Coaches Association, Andrew Chomba also expressed concern at the very turnup for the training by people from Masindi district despite the aggressive mobilisation that was mounted to ensure the district benefits from the training.
”It’s really a big challenge to the people of Masindi, surely how can we have only two participants yet we put up an aggressive mobilisation campaign to ensure we raise a good number of participants from the area”, said Chomba.
He observed the need to train more goalkeeping coaches noting that they are very few in the country and yet the available few are aging up, creating the need to have people who will replace them in the future.
Daniel Kiwanuka, the FUFA goal keeping instructor, who trained the participants noted that goal keeping is key in football revealing that no team can win a game without a goalkeeper.
He therefore called for strengthening the department in order to enable the teams to perform better.
He listed the basics of goalkeeper and goal keeping psychology as some of the areas the participants were taken through.
The Masindi district sports officer Joseph Isingoma hailed the organisers for the training saying it will greatly contribute to football development and job creation in the country as playing football is currently one of the most highly paying professions in the world.
Isingoma attributed the low interest in sports among the people of Bunyoro compared to other regions to the lack of role models like it is the case with other areas in the country.
Bunyoro region had not had a team in Uganda Premier League more than ten years after Kinyara Sugar FC which was the only club in the league was closed.
Kitara FC from Hoima that joined the league in the 2021/2022 season was relegated to Big League after finishing the season at the bottom of the table.
