Former Kenya 7s captain and current KCB Rugby head coach Andrew Amonde has outlined a blueprint to revitalize Kenyan rugby, calling for financial investment in the domestic league and a complete overhaul of local coach education systems.
Speaking on Sporty FM, the legendary captain stressed that building a formidable national team relies entirely on establishing a financially viable domestic ecosystem.
“If you want a strong national team, you must have strong, sustainable clubs. National teams are just a reflection of the domestic ecosystem,” Amonde said.
“Right now, domestic clubs are struggling just to keep their doors open, pay for field bookings, or handle logistics. We need direct investment in the Kenya Cup.”
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Amonde urged administrators and corporate sponsors to inject substantial funding into the top-flight league, proposing a major financial incentive to break the long-standing battle on the title by KCB Rugby and Kabras Sugar RFC.
The two heavyweights have monopolized the domestic scene, featuring in virtually every Kenya Cup final over the last decade and sharing every league title between them since 2017.
“The league needs real financial backing and proper prize money,we should be looking at a winner’s purse of at least KSh 10 million,” he stated.
“When there is KSh 10M on the line, every single match becomes competitive. It drives clubs to prepare better, recruit better, and it breaks the monotony of this being a two-team league where everyone already knows who will be in the final.”
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Amonde emphasized that commercializing the domestic league is essential to ensuring basic player welfare across all participating teams, narrowing the resource gap between traditional big and struggling clubs.
“We need to commercialize and fund the clubs properly so they can guarantee basic player welfare,paying actual salaries, providing comprehensive medical insurance, and treating the players like the elite athletes they are,” Amonde added.
The World Rugby certified coach pointed to foundation-level teaching as the single most critical factor in player progression.
He advocated for upgrading coaching qualifications across high schools and local clubs to eliminate technical deficiencies before players reach the senior level.
“We have to talk about coach education. Everything starts with who is teaching the players from the bottom up,” Amonde explained.
“We need to heavily invest in upgrading the certifications for our club and high school coaches moving them from basic levels to World Rugby Level 2 and Level 3 certifications. If a player reaches the senior club level or national team without knowing the basic fundamental skills,the soft skills, the catch-and-pass technique, spatial awareness,it is very hard to fix that at the top.”
To bridge the gap between local coaching standards and elite international practices, Amonde proposed structured exposure trips for Kenyan coaches.
“On top of certifications, we should create international attachment programs. Send our local coaches abroad to spend two or three weeks inside top-tier professional club environments,” Amonde urged.
“Let them shadow elite technical benches, see how sessions are structured, how video analysis is done, and bring that professional culture back into our domestic system.”
Amonde’s insights come just days after his contract as the strength and conditioning coach for the national team, Kenya Sevens (Shujaa), was terminated by the Kenya Rugby Union (KRU) due to a clause prohibiting national technical staff from concurrently holding club-level roles.