Foreign Players Stranded in Nairobi After Dispute with Kenya Rugby Union

A group of New Zealand rugby Sevens players are currently stranded in Nairobi, Kenya following a dispute with the kenya Rugby Union. After giving the Kenya 7s players a hard time, it seems that KRU is now targeted at embarassing the foreign nationals who honoured the invitation to come and play in the Safaricom 7s.

According to one of the players, up to 11 New Zealand Metro players are not able to fly out of Nairobi after participating in the Safaricom sevens tournament as Kenya Rugby Union claim that each team was to fly themselves out as KRU only catered for the journey to Nairobi.

Kenya Rugby Union officials informed the 11 players that they had a Tuesday evening flight. This was not to happen as KRU told them that they couldn’t fly out just one hour before the scheduled flight.

Now some of the players including a former NZ All Blacks player, Rocky Khan, have taken to Twitter to plead for help to enable them fly out of the country.

Rocky Tweeted;

#stranded. Kenya Rugby Union flew us over here to play and now aren’t flying us back home to NZ. Help? @IRBSevens @Eliota_Sapolu @emirates

— rocky khan (@rocky_khan000) October 2, 2014

The players have been in contact with KRU’s Philip Jalang’o who is not providing the much needed help to the 11 players. This debacle is another embarrassment to the KRU after almost all prominent players gave Safaricom 7s a wide berth following dispute with the sports management.

The high profile event was also played to almost empty stadium as fans complained about harassment and expensive services (food and drinks) as KRU and Safaricom doubled the rates for vendors making most services unaffordable.