Kenya 7s In High Spirits as they hold first training in Kurume

KURUME, Japan, Jul 13 – Kenya Sevens head coach Innocent ‘Namcos’ Simiyu says the humidity in Kurume City, Japan will favor them during competition as the team had the first training at the Fukuoka Prefecture Kurume Sports Center on Tuesday.

The squad of 12 players led by skipper Andrew Amonde who are in boot camp in Kurume, located at Japan’s Kyushu Island, had their session under the temperatures of 33°C and a humidity of 57 percent.

Having missed the tournament to Los Angeles, the team is grateful to the government and Olympics Kenya for allowing them to pitch camp in Kurume and they gave the facility a thumbs up.

“Ofcause the first session you will expect guys to be rusty because of the travelling, humidity and adjusting to the conditions here. There are a lot of housekeeping stuff that we need to do outside the pitch to ensure that we build on to during training ahead of the competition, but we are happy that we are out and we have started our performance,” Simiyu told Capital Sport from Kurume.

The Shujaa will then face South Africa the same day before warping up the Pool C with a clash against Ireland the following day July 27, facing Ireland who qualified through the repecharge.

“There’s enough time to prepare for us, we are focusing on our game plan back at home we focused on our game profiles. We are taking a game at a time. Ireland is also a good team even before they came to the core series, they made the semis in the World Series. They are quite a good team and play an expansive game so it will be interesting to see who will come out of the pool because all the teams are tough,” Simiyu underpinned.

He added, “It’s a tough pool but at the Olympics all pools are difficult, you don’t expect any easy game if you look at the last Olympics Japan played some good rugby and managed to beat New Zealand and get to the semis, so we will be very keen on how we start and hopefully we will see who will come out of the pool.”

The head coach, called on Kenyans to continue supporting the team and they promised to work hard in return and make the country proud.

“Olympics will be interesting tournament, will be exciting all teams will be coming out to play for the Olympics dream, for us knowing back at home there are 50 plus million who are supporting us it’s a big plus, we urge all Kenyans to wake up and support the boys and encourage them to give their best so that we get good result.”

-Alex Isaboke is reporting from Kurume City, Japan-