In her second column, Uganda Women's Sevens captain Helen Buteme looks back on the recent Elgon Cup series against Kenya and dreams of Olympic Gold.

Elgon Cup rugby just got tougher. For the first time, we lost by a really big margin to our Kenyan counterparts in Nairobi a few weekends ago and that was a bit of a shock for some of us who are veterans on the team, but we were hoping to pick it up in Kampala, and we did that.

The rookies on the team who had found Nairobi a bit intimidating pulled themselves together and the entire team played much better. We had thought that if the Kenyans could score six tries against us at home, we could score seven against them in Kampala, but things did not work out that way, it was a lot tighter.

We won 12-5 and although that was not enough to win the Elgon Cup on aggregate this time, it was pleasing to get back into the winning habit, and reclaim some pride.

The men's Elgon Cup fixture started in 2004 while the women's Elgon Cup only started in 2006, and it keeps the rivalry going between our two countries, while also improving our level of rugby.

Any fixture between our two nations is huge - like Mount Elgon. Land is a big thing in Africa - wealth traditionally was measured by the amount of land a man had - and Mount Elgon is on the Kenya-Uganda border so you could say that, in every Elgon Cup fixture, symbolically we are fighting for who has the rights to Mount Elgon.

It is a matter of real symbolic pride if you can win the matches, and in particular do the double now, which is what Kenya have done this year. I guess the victory is even sweeter for the Kenyan women because of the great year we have had in reaching the Rugby World Cup Sevens.

A breakthrough year for the Lady Cranes

Playing at the World Cup in Dubai earlier this year was an unbelievable experience. Just walking into the stadium with all the fans there, the atmosphere was mind-blowing, I had never experienced anything like it, and then stepping onto the pitch itself, each game we were playing against one of the best teams in the world knowing that there was a lot at stake because our whole country was looking for us to do well.

It made me really proud to be representing Uganda and, while we did not win any games, we were the first team to make it through to any World Cup, and we will always have that relationship with our nation's flag. Ugandan Women's Rugby will always have that, which is very special.

Since we got back, people have become even more supportive and people now look at Women's Rugby as something that is a bit more acceptable, which even had a bit of an knock-on effect in how our Elgon Cup matches were followed.

I have never seen such a big crowd in Kampala at a curtain raiser before. In previous years, there were a handful of people at the women's game then the crowd would suddenly swell towards the end of the second half as people got good seats for the men's game. This time round people actually came to watch the women's game and afterwards spectators came up to us to tell us how much they had enjoyed watching us play and also asked to have our photos taken with them.

I thought that the attention we got from the spectators after the game was pretty cool. Of course, some people are still negative towards women playing rugby, but the perceptions have changed, and we have had more women come in to play the game. In addition, the Uganda Rugby Union's inclusion onto the Uganda Olympic Committee is also looking more likely as a direct result of our reaching the Rugby World Cup Sevens and if Sevens gets into the Olympics I think it will be a sure thing.

Olympics dreams

Since the IOC recommendation last month, we can now also all dream even more vividly of being at the Olympics. The voters in October hold in their hands the ability to change everything even more dramatically.

Playing rugby at the Olympics is something that every female rugby player would want to do. There are questions sometimes as to whether the top 15's players in the men's game would play Sevens, or rather whether they'd make it into the teams! Well, I reckon that in the Women's Game, which is still amateur, all the top players would definitely be there.

Last year we watched the Beijing Olympics and I think that would surpass even playing at the World Cup - I do not think anything can get bigger than the Olympics. Firstly Sevens has to get in and then we would have to qualify, but it would be a dream come true.

Uganda has only won one Gold medal at the Olympics, and that was by John Akii-Bua in the 400m hurdles at the 1972 Munich Games and a road in Kampala was named after him.

So if Sevens does get in we hope to set another record by going there and winning an Olympic Gold for Uganda. 2016 is seven years away so I think we have enough time to work towards that. We have lots of talented athletes to work with and have had the Rugby World Cup Sevens experience to point us in the right direction.

Olympic Gold is a really ambitious target but that is what dreams are made of.