How my love affair with rugby started

Soccer was my first love but when I came to Lenana and was introduced to rugby everything changed. In those days all the other games were minor, rugby was THE GAME. Whenever Mean Maroon played at home everything else in Lenana usually shut down and most of the school was in attendance, even most of the subordinate staff. Little wonder than no other school in the country has produced such an endless belt of top class talent like Mean Maroon has over the years.

But I started my love affair with rugby in a rather interesting way. In 1978 we had extremely vicious bullies in Kirk. Rabbles in other houses just peed on themselves when they had to visit Kirk for whatever reason. But we rabbles in Kirk were so hardened that when we visited some houses during that dreaded round houses punishment early in the morning we found them a big joke. One such house was Lugard. Anyway I found that house rugby practice was an excellent opportunity to get my revenge
on some of these bullies. Whenever I saw some bully that I particularly disliked I would go in extra hard. This went rather well and gave me plenty of satisfaction until I encountered a guy called Lukalo. He was rather huge and well built and had a hand off that was more of a punch. I carelessly tried one of my tackles on him and ended up on the ground eating grass and with my head spinning as many stars flew past in all directions. Still this did not deter me and the next time I got an opportunity I went in very low and very hard and I would tell that he was angry because he shouted “you rabble if you injure me I will fix you.” I really didn’t care because I was going to get a beating later anyway usually for nothing else but just for being a rabble and so I treasured this moments when I would exert my revenge. This is how I developed my crash tackling, a skill that took me all the way to the Kenya national team. Looking back I will be forever grateful to Lukalo because the truth is that without him it would never have happened.