By Sadique Bamwita
ENTEBBE
The president of Uganda Table tennis Association, Robert Jagwe is disappointed with his team’s poor performance in the ongoing All African games being played in Accra city, Ghana.
However, he says he is so happy with the Badminton team performance for girls which won some bronze medals. He adds that apart from the boys’ table Tennis team, the girls’ table Tennis team came close to winning a bronze medal but narrowly lost at the quarter finals.
Jagwe who returned with the first batch of players on Monday, 11th March, 2024 attributes his team’s poor performance to lack of exposure yet their opponents were highly exposed to playing competitive games.
“I have returned with the first batch of our Table Tennis team for boys including Capt. Jonathan Senyonga and young Table Tennis World champion Joseph Sebatindira.
“In badminton our colleagues performed very well while in Table Tennis the Girls’ team came close to winning a bronze medal but lost narrowly at quarter finals 10/6 and then the Algerians caught them up and eventually won 12/10 and that was a fateful note for us as we missed out narrowly on the bronze medal . This shows we are coming closer this being our first time to reach quarter finals in the Table Tennis.
“In the team events and singles we did quiet poorly and this is the truth and this is due to three main causes which we have identified and we are trying as early as possible to resolve them.
“In the first place, we need a permanent training venue or at least a semi-permanent venue for our Table Tennis team. Secondly, we must upgrade from playing amateur table Tennis to professional table Tennis. Our players are losing to professional players who play the game for a living that is from morning to afternoon and sometimes up to night hours. Our players are not paid salary so they play when there is a competition and if it’s not there they concentrate on other income generating activities.
“We need to have this discussion as a country and for us as table Tennis we can’t discuss it alone but we need support from the National Council of Sports, Uganda Olympic Committee, Parliament of Uganda and Cabinet of Uganda. We need financial support to put our players on salary so that they can concentrate on Table Tennis. This year alone we have a tournament worth 20m US dollars so there is a lot of money we can get from this sporting activity internationally as Uganda and if we don’t focus on going internationally we shall keep losing out on that money. Badminton are trying to get there but this has been made possible with support from private individuals for example Fazil has supported them a lot plus the federation has played it’s part though as a country we need this discussion, ” Mr. Jagwe made the appeal.
“Thirdly, we our players need exposure and the more they are exposed the more they get used to different types of games . This helps them to improve during the course of training. As government begins to fund us, things are getting better for example we have a world champion Joseph Sebatindira and our girls have reached quarter finals.
“If we could get Shs.700m – 1billion we can be able to build our permanent home in Uganda because we have so many stakeholders who are willing to give us land and our role is just to build on it. Table tennis playground is like a warehouse you do the flooring and then you roof. The structure won’t cost us a lot of money but maybe we can make it look so beautiful so that we can hire it out to get some money and that is why we estimate it at Shs.700m or Shs.1billion.
“I request parliament to earmark funds for table tennis since its capable to earmark Shs. 300 billion towards Nambole stadium which is mainly for football. I think of the forty federation each should be allocated Shs.1bilion . Surprisingly , we are paying Shs.660,000 for office space per month and a year it’s about Shs.9m and 10years this would add up to Shs. 90m. So, we are actually wasting a lot of money yet we can have our own infrastructures, “Mr. Jagwe made his proposal.
“I appeal to parliament and all of us in sports to work together as Ugandans to establish a sports infrastructure for table tennis, ” Mr. Jagwe made the appeal.
On the other hand, the team captain Table tennis Jonathan Senyonga , attributes their poor performance to lack of exposure and hope the team will correct it’s mistakes in the upcoming tournament.
“We have a 9year-old world champion in table tennis yet this was the debut for the whole team. We faced a challenge of lack of exposure and most of the games we lost were against professional players for instance Egytians play from Germany whereas we Ugandans we play at home soil. We only managed to overcome our neighboring countries of Kenya, DRC Congo but failed to overcome the professionals,” Capt. Senyonga highlighted his concern.
“Our next tournament is going to be the East African regional zonal competition and Uganda has been selected to host the tournament. The participating countries will include Kenya, Rwanda , Ethiopia, Djibouti, Mauritius, Uganda and Madagascar.
‘We are going for a training camp organized by our federation to ensure we work upon our mistakes that we made during All African games, Capt. Senyonga revealed.
