Rwanda will not host any regional football event in the next two years, Council for East and Central African Football Association secretariat has confirmed.

Having hosted the senior challenge cup two years ago and the club championship twice between 2004 and 2007, the neither the Amavubi Stars nor the clubs would not enjoy the advantage of competing for regional glory on home soil probably until 2010.

Reason being that the next two editions of the GTV sponsored Senior Challenge Cup will be played in Uganda (2008) and Kenya for the 2009 event while Sudan will host next year’s club championship, the Kagame Cup.

Eritrea was awarded next year’s U-20 tournament with Tanzania as standby hosts and Zanzibar will look at the possibility of hosting the women’s tournament.

In case Kenya fails to host the 2009 challenge cup, Zanzibar would be on standby while Burundi will, for the first time in recent history host the 2009 club championship with Eritrea on standby just in case anything goes wrong for the Bujumbura regime.

On the last occasions when Rwanda has hosted the senior challenge, it has done exceptionally well winning the title in 1998 when Rwanda B beat Kenya 3-1 in the final) and narrowly losing to Ethiopia in the 2005 finals.

At the same time Rwanda has staged two club championships and APR has gone to win on both occasions, first in 2004 and again this year.

These statistics prove that the host country always stand more chances of succeeding, so how do you rate our teams’ (Amavubi and clubs) chances of success in 2008 and 2009?

However, a high ranking official at the local football federation, Ferwafa played down any negative effects of not playing on home soil any regional event in the next two years could have on Rwanda’s teams.

"Home advantage is vital in any competition but you can never always rely on it to succeed. A good team can win at any ground (home or away),” the official who never wanted his identity revealed told Times Sport yesterday by telephone.

Away from home, the Amavubi Stars have done particularly well but not as bad either, having lost in the final in 2003 in Sudan against Uganda and won third place last year in Ethiopia.

But at least, Rwanda can take comfort in the fact that despite not being able to stage any regional event, they are going to host the bigger and more internationally recognized African youth championship, CAN U-20 in 2009.

Meanwhile, Cecafa members have decried the issue of age cheating at age regulated tournaments, which was discussed during their congress last Friday, one day before the ongoing challenge cup got under in the Tanzanian city of Dar es Salaam.

This long standing issue was discussed at length but our sources that attended the congress tell us that the members noted that the solution (to age cheating) lies with member federations being honest.

Also, the congress mandated the Cecafa leadership to look at the modalities of effecting the proposed change of the Challenge Cup to a home and away basis.

In a related development, veteran Sudanese football administrator Ahmed Maazal was nominated as Honorary Life Member after serving Cecafa in many capacities for over 30 years.

Maazal was until recently the Sudan FA vice president and chairman of the Cecafa Challenge Cup committee. He was also a member of the Emergency committee. He is still a CAF match commissioner.

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