Listen Elijah Lidonde was Kenya’s best striker of the late1940s and across the ‘50s. A huge, broad-shouldered man with a powerful right foot, he was a permanent feature for Nakuru and the Kenya national team whose successes and failures in the Gossage Cuphe was part of, for about 10 years. His fame fired the imagination […]
Kick-Off
Beginnings: The Gossage cup
Listen The description of Uganda’s fourth goal during the1945 Gossage Cup match with Kenya dug up long forgotten childhood memories of tactical instructions issued to players when I went to school in the 1960s.I do not remember the coach, usually the games master, telling his young charges to “place” the ball out of the […]
Pitch of the unnamed pioneer
Listen The 19th Century builders of the so-called Uganda Railway that set off from Mombasa on its way to the source of the River Nile left us a legacy that included football, Kenya’s national pastime. We took to the new game as nestlings take to flight – it was magically simple and exciting. Mombasa is […]
Kick-Off
Listen Football is Kenya’s national pastime. There is a club, formal or informal, in virtually every village or slum in the country. This book is the story of football in Kenya. It traces its development from its origins in the 1920s to the present. The game was introduced in Kenya by the British colonialists who […]