Safari Sevens: Uganda denied again by Kenya's Lionesses
Unbeaten before their final match, the Lady Cranes lost 22-5 to Kenya on Sunday in Nairobi. The Lionesses made the difference after the break, while Lydia Namabiro carried Uganda's attack throughout the tournament.
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Women's Challenger in Montevideo, March 2024 (file picture).
Uganda had won their first four matches. Yet they left Nairobi with silver, once again behind the Lionesses. On Sunday 11 October at the Nyayo National Stadium, in this six-team women's tournament in which every side plays all the others, Kenya won the final match against Uganda 22-5 and retained their title. The final score masks a contest that was still finely balanced at the break.
The two sides were level at 5-5 at that stage. The Kenyans had opened the scoring, before Uganda hit back. After the restart, Kenya added seventeen points without reply. It was in that second half that the Lady Cranes lost the chance to turn their unbeaten run into the trophy.
A final hurdle Uganda could not clear
The Lady Cranes had not come into their last match on shaky form. They had comfortably beaten TUKS Women, the University of Pretoria side, before winning a far tighter contest against Kenya Shibli, 17-14. Their 31-7 victory over the Junior Lionesses had come before another win, over Tunisia, 32-12.
That run, with only one narrow win, helps explain their second place: Uganda showed they could win in a variety of situations, but not against the Kenyan side defending the trophy. Kenya had already denied them the title in 2025, by a far smaller margin, 14-10. The Nairobi event therefore ends with a second consecutive silver medal, though it does not erase the four wins that came before it.
Namabiro leaves with the awards, not the cup
Lydia Namabiro scored eight tries and totalled forty points in the competition. She finished as the top try scorer and the top points scorer. Her opening hat-trick against TUKS Women had given Uganda's campaign some momentum; her attacking output was not enough to swing the final match.
Kenya keep top spot after the match that mattered most. Uganda, tournament winners in 2016 and 2023, have an individual award winner in Namabiro and a record of four wins from five matches, but they are still without a victory over the Lionesses in the last two meetings for the title.
Sources
Uganda Rugby Union, official Lady Cranes review, accessed 12 October 2026: run, second place, honours and Namabiro's awards. Kenya Rugby Union, tournament preview, 5 October: six women's teams and round-robin format. The final Kenya–Uganda match is identified here as the title decider.
Victor Immanuel Oloo, NBS Sport, 11 October: Ugandan report. Hivisasa News, no individual byline, 11 October: Kenya–Uganda match report. Score of 22-5 cross-checked against the photo captions by Oliver Ananda / SportPicha of 11 October. The Hivisasa report contains an inconsistent second-half sub-score; it has not been used.
File photograph: Women's Challenger in Montevideo, 9 March 2024, NaBUru38 / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0. A match unrelated to the 2026 Safari Sevens; cropped, with SNA logo added, photographic adaptation under the same licence, SNA mark distinct.
