GAFFER took advantage of the school holidays to organize a day of football tournaments, health education and HIV Counseling and Testing for the people in and around Buguta Village!

The Men’s football tournament saw six Villages from the area represented. After hard fought qualifying rounds the Semi-Finals both went to penalty shoot outs! Kale beating Marungu and Mkamenyi showing Kisimenyi how to kick from the spot! Hundreds of fans cheered the teams on in the final match and after a hard fought game Kale reigned supreme with a convincing 2 – 0 victory! The winning team were awarding a large goat for their outstanding efforts! Kale are the team to watch as GAFFER Sport plans the upcoming Kasigau Champions League 6 for the big guys!

GAFFER Health continued to build on their excellent work in the local schools and health centres! The Peer Educators were on hand to answer questions relating to sexual health issues and St. Josephs Centre of Hope provided free Voluntary Counseling and Testing facilities for the assembled. Five nurses occupied private consultation rooms set up by GAFFER Health and tested and talked to those who chose to know their status. By the end of the day 63 people had been tested. HIV Testing is an important tool in the fight against the virus and GAFFER Health aims to work with St. Josephs to increase awareness of the free services available in the area.

The recent tour match to Mombasa has made the papers! Coastweek, the paper of choice in Mombasa, provided a full run down of all the action.

The incredible improvement in football displayed by GAFFER's youth over the last 12 months deserved showcasing in the big city! The most talented players were kitted out like Real Madrid and played at the historic Mombasa Sports Club on a sunny Sunday in Kenya's coastal metropolis...

Their opponents were one of the best performing teams around and everyone knew this would be one epic game of football. Real Madrid had kindly donated youth team strips through Javier Gonzalez who came to watch the game with a bunch of football loving Spaniards. After a morning warm up at the sea side, which most of GAFFER's team had never even seen, the game kicked off! GAFFER's lads were playing on grass and in boots for the first time and fielded players as young as 10 years old!

The game was epic. Although GAFFER were beaten, the importance of such exposure was not lost on GAFFER's top men on the ground; Mr Mo and Titus. It was also a great experience for the Mombasa players to play their comrades from the rural side of Kenya.

After the success of the Mens League, the second Youth Tournament kicked off in rural Kenya! The action began in Rukanga village and all 16 villages have fielded a team aiming to lift the Andrew Murch Memorial Shield in six months time! Coaches are trained and supported by GAFFER to push the young players to their limits. Players as young as ten battle it out with older boys and the quality of football is improving fast!

There are a number of videos that will be appearing on here from the current Kasigau Champions League that James put together for us. We hope you enjoy them! If you have trouble working them from this site, please click on the link to flickr on the left to watch.

We are now nearly half way into the regular season and by this weekend every team will have played the other teams in their group. Apologies to all hoping to follow the scores thus far on the site but we have been attacked by unpredictable web gremlins here in the bush, we believe they may well have vanished and work will continue as it should very shortly!

Suffice it to say there have already been some upsets and a lot of drama in the league thus far. It is certainly shaping up in a way that hints at a final between teams that have never previously got that far, as always in football though, everything can and probably will change!

GAFFER is also thrilled that Mr Mo will be handling management duties out here now with Mwalolo also joining us as a regional coordinator for the North and Charo doing the same in the south. Life is certainly getting busy for GAFFER and moving along very nicely. James leaves us next week to head back to the UK for a while but will no doubt continue to be a presence in the GAFFER world.

And the Kasigau Champions League is go! the first four matches took place yesterday. James attended Jora Vs Bungule, an age old rivals match. It ended nil nil but was not a game without chances. Both teams played well and I imagine the next time they meet will be quite something.

By all accounts the other matches all went well also and our new referees are performing wonderfuly. They had a nice chance to practice the day before with a youth match between Itinyi and Maungu, a match that also drew but with two goals a piece that time. Next week sees the kick off of the north Zone teams and all the action should be on a league section of this site soon.

A happy day for GAFFER today. James Ruwa has been back from college and fixing footballs for us inbetween bouts of studying hard! He has now fixed all of the footballs that GAFFER has supplied to the villages and teams and they are winging their way back to their respective owners.

Tomorrow James and Mr Mohamed will be running a seminar to train the referees for the new league and have set up a match between the youth teams from Maungu and Itinyi, this promises to be a great day for all. The big day then comes on Sunday when the new Kasigau Champions League begins in earnest with the first four matches! Look out for an update and some pictures from these fixtures very soon.

Busy times for GAFFER these last few weeks. Mr Mohamed has officially jined the family and will be adding his unique and fantastic form of football comentary to this site very soon. Ben also paid James a visit at GAFFER HQ for a few weeks.

The league kick off is on May 11th and is shaping up nicely. The fixtures are being prepared for the site as we speak. The captains all convened in Maungu this last week and all is set for another great season. Ben and James then set about visiting pitches and players to ensure all is set.

This looks set to be a great championship and with Mr Mohamed on board things can only look good for football in East Africa!

James has been hard at work for GAFFER visitng the schools and villages we work with. The welcome has been amazing and the kids are all still very active and playing lots of football after school! The men's teams are now hard at work also training for the new league. Fixtures lists are going out today and we have lots of exciting times ahead!

Keep checking back here soon for details of how the league and the youth training is continueing. We are also soon to be putting video content on the site featuring matches from the league!