Kenya Sevens team to train in ‘bubble’ from next month

Kenya national sevens rugby team head coach Innocent “Namcos” Simiyu hopes his charges will hit the road running in two weeks’ time when they head into a camp organised by the National Olympic Committee of Kenya (NOC-K).

Simiyu said it will not be possible for him to pick new players for the camps, having not had the luxury of local action for the last six months.

Instead, Simiyu, who was speaking on the sidelines of NOC-K’s Elite Performance Sports Science and Medicine Symposium on Friday at Hill Park Hotel in Nairobi, said he will tentatively work with players who are already in the system.

“I will put the existing players in a regime where I will subject them to the standard we have put in place.

“We shall then bring in more players for testing if they fall short of our expectations,” said Simiyu.  “As you know, we already have some players who are on contract.”

Been doing a lot of planning

Simiyu commended NOC-K for starting the initiative for the teams that have already qualified for the Tokyo Games due for July 23 to August 8 next year.

Having not had the luxury of the local games like the National Sevens Series to test the players, they have been doing a lot of planning, trying to get the programme ready and going.

“We hope to start training in a week or so because we are really behind looking at what our competitors have been doing.

“They are already two months into their program for the Olympics,” noted Simiyu adding that they had hoped to resume training on October 1 but Covid-19 restrictions have seen a delay.

Simiyu said the break might have been a big challenge, but hastened to add that there are certain aspects of the game that have kept the players going, like gym sessions and skills workouts despite leaving out the contact aspects.