Football coach Video enjoying a new lease of life at Amus College LFC

Over the years, the touchline antics of football coach Frank ‘Video’ Anyau have had so many people fall in love with him.

That is in spite of the fact that his football culture has not necessarily been pretty to watch. Video, as he has famously been referred to because of the aforementioned antics, has been an ultra-defensive coach.

In many quarters, this has been viewed negatively, although to Anyau, this has not bothered him: For him the end justifies the means. Such has been his football philosophy for 40 years, coaching across the board at some of the country’s top sides like Express FC, SC Villa and Dairy FC back in the day.

To vindicate Anyau, his football philosophy recently delivered Amus College Ladies Football Club its first major trophy, when they won the Fufa Uganda Cup. They beat the five-time record league champions, Kawempe Muslim Women’s football club 1-0 at the MTN Omondi stadium, and off they went into the history books, as the sixth different team to win the knock-out cup.

“It was such a fulfilling experience for me as a coach. For much of my life, I have been coaching men’s sides. I did not know what coaching women’s teams was until I joined Amus. So, to win with them, helped me overcome one of my biggest challenges in life,” Anyau said.

All along, Anyau noted, he wondered whether female footballers would respond to him as well as the men that he coached over the years, did. In fact, Anyau said he was always in awe of Kawempe coach Ayub Khalifa, and former Crested Cranes coach, Paul Ssali.

“For many years of my coaching life, women never played football. It is a recent development in Uganda. Considering how women treasure their hair, I did not think they would want to head the ball, for example, let alone chest control the ball. But my players have applied themselves without holding, and made me very proud,” Anyau said.

Seeing how well Amus parked the bus against Kawempe and frustrated them, only attacking sporadically, and getting a winning goal, when a Kawempe player scored in their own net, Anyau was delighted to see his team, which was playing in the second tier last year, follow game tactics to the dot.

Even for Anyau, a man that has coached The Cranes and numerous under-age national teams and won the league title with URA FC in 2007, his recent feat at Amus, stands out, for it is a first. To make a women’s side play to his script has him enjoying football even more than he had ever imagined.