Joan Nampungu, the assistant Captain of the National Netball team She Cranes, has revealed that it took her teammates just one rehearsal at night’s to master the dance moves that entertained the crowd at the just concluded Fast Five Netball series.
Last week, a video clip went viral showing how the She Cranes won the hearts of thousands of supporters who packed Christchurch Arena in New Zealand as well as those who were watching the games virtually when they performed a Ugandan Local Dance song titled “Tuli Babandana” by local musician Grenade official before their game against Jamaica.
While the performance made many people believe that the team had prepared well for that moment and perhaps they knew about it in advance, Nampungu says this came abruptly when they reached New Zealand for the series.
Nampungu said that the organizers made it mandatory for each of the teams that were participating in the tournament to get a song that they would perform for fans that had gathered to catch a glimpse of the action as the top six netball countries were tussling it out for the netball fast five series silverware.
She said that this was part of the organizers’ attempts to publicize the competition, which was launched 13 years ago but has remained a little unpopular due to its uniqueness in the rules and general concept that differs from a typical netball game.
“Every team was given a chance to present their dance, they told us to choose which match we were to present our dance, and we chose match two against Jamaica, we brought that dance and indeed it was successful”, Nampungu narrated to URN.
Nampungu said that they were informed about this on a Friday evening yet their first game was supposed to take place on Saturday. It is from this background her teammates came up with several suggestions of local songs until they agreed to go with the “Tuli Babandana song” which only took them a Friday night to polish which dance routines they would employ.
She explained that they decided to go with that type of song because it had the vibe courtesy of its lyrics of Tuli Babandana, tetuli bagwirana”, translated as “we are fearless, we are not foreigners.
She further said that due to the positive reactions from the crowd after they performed the song before their match against Jamaica, the organizers asked them to perform it once again on the next day which they did after their win against Netball Powerhouse- Australia on a Sunday morning.
Nampungu also said that the organizers once again asked them to re-perform the same song at the closing ceremony that was organized after the tournament.
Coach Fred Mugerwa, the head coach She cranes, told URN that once the team decided on which song to sing, he assisted in organizing them to be uniform, which he believes worked well.
