The Kenya national rugby union team is the Kenyan national team in Rugby. it is controlled by the Kenya Rugby Football Union.
The team participates at the Confederation of African Rugby (CAR) tournaments, but has never qualified for the Rugby World Cup.
A Kenya representative rugby team first played against the touring Combined South African Universities in 1929, starting a long tradition of Kenya national teams playing touring universities (mostly South African), clubs and military units (mostly Royal Naval vessels). Kenya played its first international in 1954, beating Tanganyika although the score of the game is not known. This fixture was repeated in 1955 and 1956 and then in 1958 Kenya played Uganda. These two countries were the major source of opposition for the side during the ensuing decades with matches being played frequently but irregularly as political problems in the region often interfered with fixtures. Zambia and Zimbabwe also provided regular opposition from the mid-1970s until the late 1980s when the formation of the CAR and the expansion of the World Cup provided opportunities to play competitively against many other nations. Its biggest win is against Nigeria, 96-3 on 10 August 1987 and worst defeat against Namibia 12-84 on 27 May 2006.
The Kenyan sevens team takes part in international Rugby sevens competitions and has been more successful than their XV counterpart. Their breakthrough season was 2008–09, in which they made the semifinals of the 2009 Rugby World Cup Sevens and advanced to one final and two semifinals in that year's IRB Sevens World Series. Before that, perhaps their most successful moment in sevens was beating rugby giant Australia in the London Sevens 2006, going on to reach the Final of the Plate competition. In the 2007 rugby sevens in New Zealand, Kenya went on to draw 2nd in their pot, beating such rugby giants as Argentina and Tonga, before being narrowly defeated in the quarter-finals by eventual runners-up Fiji.
Kenya compete annually against Uganda in the Elgon Cup.
During the 2011 Rugby World Cup – Africa qualification, Kenya was placed in pool c, and came away with a 76-8 win over Cameroon and a loss to Tunisia which means they did not qualify for the semi finals.
The home ground of Kenya national rugby union team is the RFUEA Ground in Nairobi.
Read more about Kenya National Rugby Union Team: International Results, 2010 Victoria Cup Squad, Notable Players
Famous quotes containing the words national, union and/or team:
“The cinema is going to form the mind of England. The national conscience, the national ideals and tests of conduct, will be those of the film.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“Imagination is a valuable asset in business and she has a sister, Understanding, who also serves. Together they make a splendid team and business problems dissolve and the impossible is accomplished by their ministrations.... Imagination concerning the world’s wants and the individual’s needs should be the Alpha and Omega of self-education.”
—Alice Foote MacDougall (1867–1945)