Magunga with the ball in this team photo of the first Mean Machine team to win the Impala Floodlights Tournament.
By David Bukusi
Andrew Omondi Magunga was one of those chaps who helped many of us get a thorough orientation in the world of the living. My association with the good man started when we met at the founding of the Barclays Bank Rugby Football Club. The good man had come from St. Patrick’s Iten, which we then thought only produced long distance runners. He joined a team of wannabe rugby players, many of whom had never played rugby before but had heard of it and were dying to learn how to play. Others were young and upcoming players who just could not get a chance to play in the established clubs of the times and Barclays provided a useful blooding ground. The year of the formation of the Barclays Bank RFC brought with it a mode of play that later came to be associated with Evans Vitisia’s bees (his time at the same club). The lads were all over the place playing high adrenaline rugby, tackling anything that moved at top speed and attacking in fury and in numbers. That was the team that Omondi Magunga had such a key role in bringing to the rugby map.
Incredibly, (or so I thought), we later met at medical school, in the same class. We joined the Mean Machine together and I stand to be corrected here, but we eventually had 4 and sometimes five members of that class representing the Mean Machine First team at a time this included the late Steve Ramogo, Elijah Muriithi, David Sakari, Andrew Omondi Magunga and I, all of whom ended up playing representative rugby at some point.
It was great to be in medical school with these wonderful classmates and after pushing ourselves all day from 8 to 5 in class, we would all take off on a mandatory run before heading down for training from either Main Campus, Chiromo or finally Medical school, after which we would ’storm’ the dinning hall and kindly request for double servings of whatever was being served, and the cooks were our buddies and so they would kindly oblige. Incredibly, Omondi would then lead us out to discussion groups on many days to discuss the various topics in medicine and when talk is made of molecular biology and it’s impact on medicine, I remember the good man. He would wax lyrical about it while a number of us would wonder what on earth he was talking about. Such was his keenness for new knowledge.
In 1983-4, Omondi and Elijah Muriithi went to the gym. They grew strong and powerful and eventually powered their way into national teams. It was incredible what the outcry was in those days!!!! They will get too big!!! They will be unable to run!!!, They will become too clumsy!!!, What do they think they are trying to do, become Mr. Kenya? Incidetally, Micky Ragos was still reigning at the time and eventually retired as Champ in his forties. The lads did not look back and their rugby grew in leaps and bounds. These days if you do not go to the gym, clearly you will be an oddity like Tyson Gay or the other chap who won the Commonwealth 100 meters title a short while ago.
Football is a game for gentlemen played by ruffians (not necessarily bad guys- but ruffians all the same), while Rugby is a game for Ruffians played by gentlemen. And truly, Omondi Magush was a gentleman off the field. He could turn on the chivalry with a panache that would amaze me and many who interacted with him but most of the time he was a down to earth guy who would go out of his way to help those in need around him.
One of our last Intra Machine assignments with Magush was the Intra-campus rugby sevens bowl tournament which we won. Magush used his height for aerial balls, while the rest of us who were fairly big, locked up the ball in mauls and would occasionally release one of our number with quicker legs to score the tries. We celebrated for days.
Andrew Omondi Magunga eventually worked in Nakuru, where he also participated in the revival of Nakuru rugby at the Nakuru RFC. He also played for Mwamba RFC.
He was a worthy teammate on the field who would not give up, whatever the score.
May the good Lord rest his soul in eternal peace.
