Uganda Women's captain Helen Buteme has joined Al Caravelli, Gordon Tietjens, Paul Treu, Ollie Phillips and Nigel Starmer-Smith in contributing a regular column on the Sevens game. In her first column, Buteme looks back on Uganda's debut on the Rugby World Cup Sevens stage, what it has meant for the Women's Game in the African country and what the future holds..
The 2009 Rugby World Cup Sevens in Dubai changed the face of women's rugby in Uganda, forever.
Since the Lady Cranes played on the world stage, our player numbers have gone up and more girl's schools want to play. We've also seen a number of people crossing over from other sports, especially from athletics - I guess Justine Bayigga's successful switch from track to rugby inspired them.
Other than the Olympics, there's nothing bigger than a World Cup and other women now want to play in a tournament like that. Rugby seems to be the best way to get there.
Like everywhere else in the world, women's sports take a backseat to men's in Uganda - we're under-funded, get virtually no media coverage and nobody comes to watch us play - but despite that, we play our respective sports for the simple reason that we love them. Now that we're World Cup players, we're still under-funded but we're more successful than any man's sport in Uganda, so we have bragging rights until they get there!
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I think the best thing to have come out of us going for the World Cup, though, is that it has helped change a lot of the negative attitudes towards women's rugby players here. Thankfully, our media came on board and helped us step into the limelight for about two weeks prior to the tournament, during the tournament itself and two weeks afterwards, so we were able to tell our side of the story and be heard.
People connected with us and, although we lost all of our games, a lot of people think we're heroines. We've now got a small fan base and it's considered sort of cool to be a female rugby player. Sometimes we get recognised on the street and people come up and tell us how proud they are of us, and to not give up playing rugby. Not everyone has been won over but it's a good start and that will help us draw even more girls and women to the game.
World Cup memories
It's been about four months since Dubai, but whenever I meet up with my teammates, we inevitably end up talking about the World Cup. One topic that never gets skipped is the thrashing we got at the hands of New Zealand - that welcomed us onto the big stage!
On that day, and for a couple of weeks afterwards, we were shell-shocked but now we can afford to tease each other about it.
We also keep telling everyone who will listen about the size of the players from the other teams. We had gone to the gym regularly for a couple of months prior to the World Cup and bulked up considerably - by our standards - but we were still so small. It was a bit of a shock really.
It was a tough tournament for us, but in all it was an awesome experience that we don't regret. We played against the best and also got to be part of that amazing atmosphere in the stands and watch two fantastic, nail-biting finals live - Australia versus New Zealand for the women and Wales versus Argentina for the men. That is something that never would have been possible if we had not qualified.
It's hard to say what I loved best about it as there was so much going on but I'll never forget running onto the main pitch for our game against South Africa. The crowd was so loud and the occasion was pretty intimidating but once the referee's whistle blew for the start of the game everything seemed to fade into the background and it was just 15 of us on pitch.
I think the standard of rugby in the women's competition was really quite high, especially the main Cup semi finals and the final. All three games were tense and the players showed real class and a good understanding of the game. A lot of people probably forget that all of those players were amateurs, after all. My personal favourites were the Australians - they did not have the side-stepping skills of the New Zealanders but they really worked together as a team.
Bridging the divide
Of course there was a huge gap between the top teams and the bottom teams and when it comes down to it that difference was probably due to exposure. The weaker teams need to play regularly against better opposition in order to up their game. Take the example of the Kenyan men's team: from being the whipping boys on the IRB Sevens World Series 10 years ago, they were semi finalists at the 2009 World Cup, finalists at the Adelaide Sevens and no longer simply the crowd favourites wherever they go. They are living proof of what is possible.
An annual IRB Sevens tournament for the women, or more exposure at World Series tournaments, would definitely help even things up a bit more, and give weaker nations a chance to play in top level competitions on a more regular basis and improve their rugby. Four years is a long time to wait.
Finally, we're all on tenterhooks. It would be fantastic if Sevens got into the Olympics, especially if they had women's rugby alongside men's rugby.
I know that, realistically, women's rugby is not going to draw that many spectators on its own, but held alongside the men's competition we'd capture their fans and hopefully ignite their interest so that they would become our fans too - it worked out pretty well in Dubai.
Financially too, women's rugby in Uganda would benefit as more resources would actually be channelled into the Women's Game and our Government would be forced to support women's rugby. We'd also get even more players coming into the game and more support in terms of fans. Some people in Uganda do not really value World Cups (unless it's football), but the Olympics.. I think that they would sit up and take notice.
And what would we bring to the Olympics? The Lady Cranes - need I say more?!
