Uganda win with the new King of Scotland

The connections between Uganda and Scotland continue but are now thankfully looking a lot happier than they ended in the film ‘The last king of Scotland’.

The Glaswegian born former Kilmarnock, Hibernian, Plymouth and Chester manager Bobby Williamson has led Uganda to success in the Cecafa Cup on home soil with a 1-0 victory over Kenya earlier this week.

Disappointment

This victory was the tenth time that the Ugandans have won this tournament and will go a long way towards easing the disappointment of failure to qualify for the 2010 World Cup and the African Cup of Nations.

Williamson took over as manager of Uganda replacing the now Hearts manager Csaba Laszlo. He originally signed a unique two game deal. Uganda, nicknamed The Cranes, needed to win their last two games in the qualifiers for the World Cup and the African Cup of Nations to have any chance of progressing further for the first time in thirty years. The games, away to Niger and at home to Benin were crucial to the country.

Short-term

On appointing Williamson, Ugandan Football Association (Fufa) president Lawrence Mulindwa said, “Williamson has a short-term contract with Fufa. If we are satisfied with his work, then we shall sign a long-term deal. As Bobby can see, our media want results. We need six points from the two remaining matches to progress. If he takes us there, he will be our hero.”

A 3-1 defeat in the game at Niger despite taking a first half lead put an end to any chances they had. However, a 2-1 victory at home to Benin was enough for Williamson to keep his job for the Cecafa Cup. Fufa will now be pleased that they decided to extend the contract.

When asked how he came to be given the Ugandan job shortly after being appointed, Williamson gave a fairly obvious answer. “The job became available, I applied for it and got it,” he said!

The Cecafa Cup win is a great boost for the country and for Williamson. They went through the tournament scoring sixteen goals and conceding just one. In the final they saw off Kenya with a sixteenth minute goal from Bryan Omwony who finished as the tournament’s top scorer with five.

Wild celebrations

The game was close and Kenya were never ‘out of it’ but Uganda held on to spark wild celebrations by the Ugandan fans at the final whistle.

Although their tenth victory, this was Uganda’s first for five years.

After the victory Williamson told the BBC, “I’m pleased for all the players, they’ve worked ever so hard since we came into the tournament. Nobody really gave us a chance, even our own people. We’ve proved them all wrong and hopefully people will start to show a bit of respect to these guys.”

Amateur

Captain Andy Mwesigwa was also quick to comment on people’s perception of his young team, “A lot of words have been said about this team, like it’s a youth team or an amateur team. For most of the guys, this is their first international engagement. But they have shown that they are not youths, well they are youths of course, but they are mature in terms of football.”

Williamson and Mwesigwa were both very upbeat about Uganda’s footballing future if they can manage to keep this Cup winning team together. “I think Uganda has a great future with the present team,” Mwesigwa said.

Williamson added, “Every game we play we want to win. It’s going to be difficult to continue to win games because there’s still a lot of players out there who never had a chance in this tournament and I’ll need to see them playing at some stage. So we’ll win games, we’ll lose games, but we’ve won them when it mattered. There was a trophy at stake here and we’ve delivered it and it set a record for Ugandan football also, so I’m very pleased for everybody connected with Uganda.”

Everyone connected to Ugandan football will be hoping that this win can be the springboard needed to take the country back to the heights they achieved in the late 1970s when they finished second in the African Cup of Nations. Maybe they could even entertain thoughts of making it on to the World stage having failed to make World Cup progress in their four attempts so far.

Partnership

Congratulations to the Cranes and well done to Bobby Williamson. They might be an unusual partnership, but they might just be a successful one.