74 Companies To Compete In This Year’s Corporate League

Running for the 19th consecutive year, the corporate league returns bigger with 74 companies confirming their participation in this year’s tournament that kicks off this Sunday (23rd February 2020) at the Kyambogo University Sports Grounds.

The highly fun packed league, which has Hotel Africana as overall defending champions, will start off with football and fun games.

The 19th edition will run every last Sunday of the month up to November 29th 2020 with the grand dinner and awarding ceremony  slated for 4th December 2020.

The league will see corporate companies compete in different disciplines which include football, volleyball, basketball, swimming, wood ball, athletics, netball, pool, fun games-tug of war and 3 legged race.

The new chairman of the executive committee Boaz Nabimanya indicated that companies taking part in this year’s edition have increased to 74 up from the 56 that participated last year.

“A total of 20 new companies have joined corporate league this year. Some of the new entrants include SGA, Petroleum Authority, UBOS, Bella Wines, Kirudu Hospital, NGO Bureau, Rene industries, Mobikey Trucks, NITA- Uganda, KFC, MOVIT, Finca Uganda among others.

“We are excited about the commencement of the league. An increase in the number of companies participating means we have to triple our efforts in as far as running the league smoothly is concerned. Expect an improvement in quality of outings, venues, branding and officiating,” Nabimanya said.

He said that in order to run an effective league free of mercenaries, team managers are required to present albums of their players before kick-off for verification of players and issuance of licenses.

“The deadline for delivering the team albums to the corporate league secretariat is on Friday 21 February, short of which, teams will forfeit points,” he added.

Jennifer Namugga, the league manager said  to weed out cases of indiscipline and foster sportsmanship, punitive measures have been put in place.

For instance, if a player gets a yellow card, the team loses 2 points. (In previous seasons, they were docked one point off).

If they get a red card, three points will be docked and if a team accumulates over 3 yellow cards or 2 red cards through the season, they are docked 15 points in the final tally as a punishment for indiscipline and roughness.

Dennis Ssebugwawo Mbidde, the board chairman corporate league said that one major change that will happen this season is the change in the point awarding  system.

“The awarding system will look more at corporate values like branding, transparency and responsiveness at the expense of just grinding out results on the pitch. As such, sports will score 40%, corporate values 40% and 20 % will be at the discretion of judges,” he said.

He also revealed that there will also be an increase in the number of games for participants aged 35 years and above reasoning that it is this lot that needs more playing time.

The league patron also Managing Director National Social Security Fund (NSSF), Richard Byarugaba, revealed that the corporate league should set benchmarks that will help it operate smoothly over the next decade and beyond.

He says that besides bringing communities together through sports, the league should be taken a notch higher to encompass team building, networking and keeping fit.