Kenya U20 Head Coach Paul Odera (www.KRU.co.ke) is happy with his team’s preparations for next month’s Rugby Africa U20 Barthes Cup in Namibia. The former Kenya international was speaking on the sidelines of his side’s build up match against Kenya Cup side Resolution Impala Saracens at the Impala Club on Monday night.

 “The preparation is going on well. Best thing about this season is that we’ve started early….having started in July last year…it’s been momentum building very slowly.”

 “Today’s game was fantastic. My objective was to see how the players can deal with the pressures of playing a strong team. We’ve
seen that there are players who are able to deal with the pressure and they’ve also learnt a lot about themselves. The second objective was to see if the systems we’ve been training are working….both on defense and attack. We are happy to see that the players are disciplined enough to get onside on and were able to look up and on attack read what’s in front of them, which is something we’ve been working really hard at.”

 Chipu led Impala 19-5 at the break before going down to a 29-27 score at full time. Commenting on the result, Odera said, “Of course it’s always important to win a game…but the score was not the important bit. What was really important was how this team was going to play.”

 “Some players have put their hands up to be selected while some still have work to do. It will be important to have a conversation with each individual player so that they can see where they are and where we can move them forward from here.”

 Distributed by APO Group on behalf of Kenya Rugby Union (KRU).