You can’t look beyond APR for PNL title

IT’s a new season, two new teams, a committed sponsor, so much in terms of expectations from fans but one thing will certainly remain constant, and that is APR starting yet another season once against everyone’s favourite to win the league title, their 12th in 17 seasons. The army side has dominated Rwandan football in the past decade and there is no sign that their supremacy is about to be gate-crushed any time soon, at least not when none of their supposed main rivals, Rayon Sports and Kiyovu appear to be ill-equipped to put up a formidable challenge. For the neutrals and rival fans alike, with each new season you keep hoping for a change, yet each passing season seems to make APR even stronger (by Rwandan standards) and ironically, as the army side grows stronger, their main rivals appear as though they’re getting even weaker. And that’s the problem. It’s not APR’s problem that their rivals struggle to cope with the challenges that come with fighting for dominance in whatever domain, not only in Rwanda but everywhere else in the word. So Rayon, Kiyovu, Etincelles and whoever else’s pain is very much APR’s gain. Actually the real challenge is on these other title pretenders to sort out their persistent problems, focus on building a team capable of winning consistently; after all, it doesn’t require doing anything special to dislodge the 11 time league winners, as Atraco showed us a couple of seasons ago. But again, Atraco paid the ultimate price for trying to do what the Rayons and Kiyovus of this world have to do over the years, and that is dislodging APR from their comfort zone, where anything below being at the pinnacle of Rwanda’s football is considered unthinkable, leave alone being acceptable. Atraco, headed by a retired army colonel by the names Lodovic Twahirwa but better known by his pseudo name Dodo, came on the scene and took everyone including APR, by surprise, culminating in winning the 2007/08 season on top reaching three successive Peace Cup finals. A season later, the taxi-men’s side missed out on winning what would have been an historic treble. With the Cecafa/Kagame cup and MTN Peace cup already won, Atraco needed to beat Marines by any score at Amahoro stadium to crown a memorable year, regardless of the outcome of APR’s game against Mukura in Huye on the last day of the season. But somehow, Sam Timbe’s side, under enormous pressure and the original league trophy on display at the stadium, while a duplicate had been taken to Huye just in case failed to deliver even a single goal as Marines players game 110 percent in that particular gave, knowing that a draw (which could have even been a win) was good enough to help their elder brothers win the title, and that’s how it went. Three-quarters of the following season, Atraco went out of business amid frenzied chaos, where players and the technical staff had gone for months without pay. That’s the price you pay when club punches above its weight in the name of competing for dominance without a proper long-term business plan. APR, Rayon, Kiyovu and almost, if not all Primus National League clubs, just like Atraco and Electrogaz (another side that went out of business last season) look to me as if they were born by the same mother. They appear to operate on day-to-day survival instincts, as seen in their recruitment ‘policies’, which don’t seem to favour future planning. And with Atraco out of the picture, I wouldn’t look beyond Kiyovu as APR’s main challenger for the title, first because they have, to me, the best coach in the country Jean Marie Ntagwabira and secondly he signed a bunch of experienced players, mostly from his former club Atraco with whom he won the league title. Given stability, and his bosses do him a favour and pay their players promptly throughout the season, no other one man has the key to stopping APR going for a 12th league title and a third on the trot than Ntagwabira. The other problem with Rayon Sports and their fans is that they can talk the talk but when it comes to walking the walk, they go missing completely. They still live in the past and feed on ‘we’re the most supported club in Rwanda’ rhetoric, none the less, the league is better off with than without the Blues. nku78@yahoo.com