NSC preps in top gear, says Leo's Ojal

Leos finished fourth in the competition and was the only club side to finish in the top four, as the tournament saw invitational side Shogun and South Africa All Stars finish second and third respectively with Uganda’s Emerging Cranes winning the tourney.

“I think it was a very good outing, a chance for us to measure where we are, especially with opponents that we've never played against before playing in a different area, everything being new. I would say we ticked very many boxes having finished fourth out of 12 teams for the first time.

“I think that was very good on our end. We were the only club side to finish in the top four because number three was Shogun, which is a select side, number two was South Africa All-Stars, which is basically an academy for sevens then number one was the Uganda Emerging National Team.  Out of all those people, top four, we were the only club side,” Ojal assessed.

Ojal notes there are lots of improvements to be made before the commencement of the National Sevens Circuit later next month.

“I think we still have to tweak a bit more on our defense. We had only worked on defense going into Kampala, but we somehow conceded in every single game that we played. As much as, on average, it was 1.3 conceded tries per game, we were hoping it would be lower because we had only worked on defense.”

“But on the upside, that we had not worked on attack, we managed to score in every game as well, giving us an average of about three tries per game. So, I'd say we still need to improve on our defensive work and start doing better also in our attacking, because, as we know, defense wins you tournaments,” he added.

The varsity side will step up their training in the coming weeks as they prepare to feature in Nondescript’s tourney before the start of the National Sevens Circuit mid-July.

“We'll continue training hard and we still have one more tournament that will be happening at Nondies. Nondies also have replaced Embu because Embu now is going to host a leg in the circuit.

“So, we will play in one tournament at Nondies rugby club on the 12th of July, which is two weeks just before the circuit and hopefully by then we'll have fine-tuned most of the things that we need to have.”