Overview of the 2023 Zambia Rugby Union Season

2023 Zambia Rugby Season in Review

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The year 2023 has been a fast paced and an active year for Zambian rugby starting on dramatic note and ending on a dramatic note as well. The year started with a dramatic AGM, dramatic finish to the league and dramatic suspension of the Vice President.

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Despite all the dramatic episodes believe it or not the season is not a write off and there were a number of positives including the return to rugby for the 15s national team after a Two (02) year hiatus and sublime performance of the Women’s 7s team at the Olympics Pre Qualifiers.

We attempt to give an overview of the 2023 Rugby season and list a number of expectations in the coming year.

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2023 ELECTIVE AGM

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The year started in one of the most dramatic ways with an AGM in February 2023 which was supposed to have elections but ended instead with the Councilors resolving that the elections should not take place because of irregularities. Some candidates had been omitted off the ballot papers and with the intervention of the National Sports Council of Zambia the elections and presentation of 2022 Financials were deferred by Three (03) months to May 2023.

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BARTHES U20 Tournament

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This tournament took place in rugby crazy city of Nairobi, Kenya and the boys were on fire as they played with a hunger to win despite the short camping period which continues haunting the Zambia Rugby national teams. The boys played Namibia ,Ivory Coast and Uganda winning one game against Uganda and narrowly losing to a more fancied Namibia 20-12 and a physical Ivory Coast 20 -27.

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The team finished at 6th place behind Zimbabwe, Kenya, Namibia, Tunisia, Ivory Coast, and ahead of Uganda and Madagascar. Electric Fly half TENDAI CEDRIC ended the tournament as the Tournament top point scorer with 38 points beating his closest contender AHMED RIHAI from Tunisia by 10 points.

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2023 ZAMBIA RUGBY UNION LEAGUE

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The Zambia Rugby League comprising One (01) Women’s League and Two (02) Men’s tiers namely the National league and the Presidential league kicked off in March. The League was rather smooth with the most teams filling fixtures and lessor postponements as compared to the previous year.

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KANSANSHI mysteriously pulled out of the league after hosting one game against Eagles in Sowlezi and became the first team to be eliminated from the main league and were later joined surprisingly by Green Eagles.

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The Presidential League was more bumpy as at one instance CHIBULUMA failed to show up at their home ground for a league fixture against NKWAZI and eventually the winners and runners up of the league saw the promotion of ROAN and NKWAZI to tier 1 rugby in 2024.

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The Women’s saw a new team Buffaloes Women’s team emerge although this was at the expense of the Mufulira Leopardess team where a number of Players came from. It was gratifying to note that the Leopardess team remained resilient and was able to grow another “head” and even participated in the Independence Challenge. The Women’s League was won by the Red Arrows Ladies for the first time who had their best season in 2023 sweeping every tournament which came their way.

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The National League ended in a dramatic finish as the winner of the League was not decided until the last whistle. The two deciding games were played in two different cities at the same time and by half time the permutations were getting harder and harder and eventually on points aggregate the Red Arrows team emerged victorious with what remains the “controversial point aggregate rule” to decide the winners of the League in case of points tie.

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7s TOURNAMENTS HOSTED BY CLUBS

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The 7s Tournaments were successfully hosted by Nchanga, Konkola, Diggers, Mufulira Leopards, Lusaka, Eagles and the Red Arrows Rugby Clubs respectively. Most of the tournaments lived up to expectations. There were a few hiccups such as reduced prize money different from advertised, one disputed win by the Ladies and a request to transfer the tournament final to another tournament etc.

All in all the organization of the tournaments seem to be improving and we are certain that the overall quality of the tournaments will continue improving and attract more sponsors.

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PARIS 2024 OLYMPIC QUALIFIERS (MENS AND WOMENS 7s)

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The Zambia Rugby 7s National teams were engaged in three main international tournaments with the Ladies teams participating in the 2024 Paris Olympic pre - qualifiers in Lusaka, Zambia and the Olympic Qualifiers in Monastir, Tunisia.The tournament had 10 participating teams Algeria, Burkina Faso, DR Congo, Egypt, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Mauritius, Senegal, Zimbabwe and Zambia as host.

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A big thank you to the Zambia Breweries who forked out about K500,000.00 to the hosting of the event and other sponsors such as Freddy Hirsh,Country Choice and the Zambia Air Force for supporting the girls during the campaign. The hosting of the 2024 Paris Olympic pre - qualifiers in Lusaka, Zambia was a litmus test for the organization capability of the Zambia Rugby Union of an Olympic sport and the score was fair given that there was no government funding received for this K2,000,000.00 budget.

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Thank fully the Ladies delivered an electric performance winning many Zambia hearts and emerged winners of the tournament amongst the ten participating countries and an automatic qualification to the 2024 Paris Olympic Qualifiers/Africa Cup in Monastir, Tunisia.

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The eight (08) teams that competed for the Olympic games were Tunisia, Ghana, Madagascar, Kenya, South Africa, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe on 14 to 15 September 2023 in Monastir, Tunisia. The tournament was won by South Africa who qualified to the Olympics whilst Kenya and Uganda qualified for the Repecharge with a chance to will qualify for the Olympics. Zambia bowed out at position to end the campaign missing the services of at least 4 of their critical match makers.

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The Men participated in the Africa Cup/2024 Paris Olympic qualifiers in Harare, Zimbabwe and played the eventual winners of the tournament Kenya. The Zambia 7s Men’s team has continued performing very well despite the so many struggles it faces which is limited camping time and they emerged in 5th position behind Kenya,South Africa,Uganda and Zimbabwe.

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PLAYER TRANSFER/WELFARE

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This remains a critical component and the new ZRU has committed to ensuring that player welfare takes centre stage. It is our hope that all Clubs will be able to insure the players on travel and injuries in the 2024 season and that the player transfer policy will be made in such a way that the benefit of the policy will be mutual to both club and player and that it will not be against player benefit as the player should be the ultimate beneficiary of such a policy.

The rugby administrators have hidden behind the “rugby in Zambia is amateur” for so long and we hope that they smell the coffee and realize that it is semi-professional and marching at a fast pace to full professional game.

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2024 EXPECTATIONS

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We have high hopes for the 2024 season as we know that that the new ZRU Administration has outlined their intention to improve the various administrative structures and enforcement of policy in line with prevailing World Rugby standards.

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We hope that the Councilors will step up the level of driving the rugby agenda in the 2024 AGM which will set the pace and standard for all rugby clubs.

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We hope that the gap between the Corporate and rugby will be bridged because our game is in desperate need for an injection of finance. The attraction of corporate sponsors to the game is a collective effort of all the clubs by having good corporate governance practice and accountability at both club and Union level.

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We also hope that the Rugby calendar for the 2024 be released as soon as possible so that clubs can start forecasting their budgets and share with sponsors. The approval and adoption by the AGM should just be a formality.

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We also hope that all the Technical and Administrative appointments for the National Team Coaches, Team Medics, Team Managers etc of the National team will be done early so that the people involved can start planning around their game activities and training programmes.

We hope that the National team players will be fully kitted with tracksuits,vests,golfers etc and with Gods grace National team blazers.

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It is our hope that a strategic plan is developed so that all Clubs can buy in and align to support the vision of the ZRU Exco.

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It is our belief that we are entering a new season and that all the bad press and politicking of 2023 will be over as there is a lot of work to be down and all hands on deck are required.

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The new ZRU will now properly start their mandate from the beginning and set their agenda and we have the trust that they will deliver a successful 2024 as long as they have a listening ear and practice inclusivity and work as a team.

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We wish all the rugby stakeholders a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year 2024.

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