The Masaza Cup is reestablishing competitive football at grassroots
On a recent Saturday, I visited a construction site in Busukuma, just outside Gayaza around lunch hour. The workers were a bit restless.
I thought it was about their lunch or an impending payment. Many construction site owners pay their workers’ weekly wages on Saturday evening. One of the workers whispered to another that he would prefer being paid half day for that Saturday so that he could immediately leave the site for the weekend.
Something big must have been bothering him as well as a few of his colleagues. He decided to shoot his shot by approaching his boss — the site ‘engineer.’ The other workers were peeping from the scaffoldings to see if his request would be granted.
The ‘engineer’ had a deadline to make and refused to grant the request. I heard the dejected worker telling his colleagues that their boss had instead offered them his portable radio set. Apparently, the workers had wanted to go watch a football match.
This wasn’t an Arsenal-versus-Manchester United match in the English Premier League or any of those highly-billed European matches. European football has taken a summer break. Teams are in pre-season tours around the world, except Africa, and busy strengthening their squads in the ongoing modern-day ‘slave market’ that they call the transfer window.
I later learnt that the match the workers were eager to watch at the expense of half their daily wages was at Nakivubo stadium. Why would workers in Busukuma want to go downtown Kampala to catch a match? What match was it?
It was a group stage match in the Masaza Cup between Kyadondo county and Bugerere county. Busukuma is in Kyadondo hence their interest. Many youths were storming Nakivubo to support their teams.
Later in the evening, images emerged of a nearly-full Nakivubo stadium with many supporters cheering their respective teams, something rarely seen nowadays between the country’s biggest football clubs in the national league. How did Buganda get there?
Although the revamped Masaza Cup, a competition between Buganda’s 18 counties, has been on for a while and the final sees the Mandela National Stadium at Namboole full to the brim, the group matches had not created the kind of enthusiasm they do these days.
Towns hosting these group matches come to a standstill as huge crowds turn out to watch. Supporters raise money to push their teams to the grand finale at Namboole or wherever the final is organised. It is interesting that a local competition is starting to attract the kind of attention that was largely reserved for European football.
And people are willing to board the taxis, pay entrance fee, and support their teams. What has Buganda done of recent to create this kind of interest in its premier competition? Unlike the Bika (clans) football competition, Masaza Cup is open to everyone who resides or pays allegiance to their Ssaza of abode. I
t is, therefore, not uncommon to find a Peter Okello playing for Buddu or Butambala. Counties with good funding even pay sign-on fees once they see a player of interest playing for their rivals — akin to what happens in the professional football leagues. One doesn’t have to be a Muganda to play in the competition.
That decision is unifying and plays into the cosmopolitanism of Buganda, a polity that is for all. But that alone wouldn’t probably have made the Masaza Cup endearing to many, especially at the group stages.
About two years ago, the kingdom started the Ggombolola tournaments where sub-counties compete against one other. Those matches are increasingly becoming popular. They feed the main Masaza Cup with players while creating football structures at the grassroots.
To attract more people, they have added wrestling (ekigwo) and netball, thereby creating a mini sports extravaganza at the sub-county level. That kind of mobilization is also seen in growing coffee in Buganda as well as in the support the kingdom receives from its ordinary people.
You can’t go catch a game when you don’t earn anything. So, young people are inspired to work to better their lives. Indeed, Fufa, the local football body, could pick a leaf from Buganda’s success.
Grassroots football creates generic enthusiasm that our Uganda Premier League, now largely owned by corporate entities, lacks. Where does Maroons FC, for example, owned by the Uganda Prisons, get its fanbase? From prisoners?
Nobody allows prisoners to traverse the country to watch their team. SC Villa or Express, where are their fanbases? The Masaza Cup may be a model they could study.
djjuuko@gmail.com
The writer is a communication and visibility consultant.
Related
