Kayiranga wants Rayon job

Interim coach Jean Baptiste Kayiranga has admitted that he would be delighted to have the Rayon Sport coaching job full time. After weeks of chaos, some form of calm returned at the country’s most supported club on Sunday following a hard fought but deserved 0-0 draw with league leaders Atraco, a result that temporarily put a break to the taxi-men’s hopes to retain the title with two matches left. It all started last week on Tuesday when (Rayon) players, who had not received their paychecks for April, wrote to the club management threatening to boycott Sunday’s game with Atraco. In a bizarre twist of events, the club’s chief mobilizer Patrick Itangishaka also dramatically resigned alleging among other things that the club’s executive committee was not acting professionally in threatening to sack Raoul Shungu. Yet on Sunday, there were no visible signs of lack of enough training in the Rayon players, who put in a spirited performance. After the game, interim coach Kayiranga acknowledged that although his players had only trained for two days, he was happy with their overall performance against an Atraco side that’s within touching distance of a second successive league title. “I told the players to forget about what had happened earlier in the week and concentrate on the crucial league match against Atraco. Technically, we were fine,” he told Times Sport. Asked for his view about the sacking of Shungu, his long time friend, Kayiranga said, “I can’t comment on Shungu and anything to do with him but I hope to get this job permanently, although that is a decision of the club’s executive committee.” Meanwhile, Rayon Secretary General, Olivier Gakwaya has confirmed that the issue of finding a new head coach will be decide next week by the Executive Committee. “I can’t tell you now if he (Kayiranga) will be retained or if we are looking at other coaches. But next week, the executive committee will have made a decision on that front,” he said. Kayiranga was Shungu’s assistant even the last time the Congolese coach left the club to take the role of technical director for the Seychelles Football Association in 2004. The former Rayon midfielder was named as Shungu’s replacement, a post he held for two years before he was sacked on grounds of ‘insubordination’ to his bosses. And when Shungu returned for the second spell in December 2007, he asked the club managers to bring back Kayiranga as his assistant, which they did without any delays. Ends

Lifestyle

Kayiranga wants Rayon job