There is a tendency to heap superlatives on people who have died, often emotionally, as a way of bidding a final farewell. I’ve heard quite many touching eulogies about the late Jimmy Kirunda but you ought to have met him as a player to understand why, even in his death, he remains a revered person.
One afternoon in 1981, I was lucky to be chosen among the few young KCC fans to travel with the team to Bugembe to face Tobacco FC. Such trips met everything for me because I got to mix and mingle with the stars. Before we could leave Lugogo, Jimmy Kirunda read out the players’ list to ensure everyone was on board.
The reply from the player, including team captain Sam Musenze, was ‘Present Senior.’ On the bus was the usual chitchat about what to expect in the game but the talk would veer into full-blown arguments until Kirunda stood up to silence everyone. This was my first feel of the awe surrounding Kirunda.
This routine went on till Bugembe. The game itself was not the best for KCC as they lost 0-2 but it was hardly deflating because was a renowned giant killer.
As everyone gathered around the bus on the way back, Kirunda was conspicuously absent. Some players informed the driver that Kirunda had boarded another car to Jinja where the team would find him but everyone, including acting coach Moses Nsereko, could not take the risk.
A decision was later made to start the journey to Kampala but in a big surprise, Kirunda’s seat in the bus remained unfilled. No one could dare sit in ‘Senior’s’ place until the team caught up him in Jinja.
This was the life of Kirunda off the pitch that many didn’t get to know and he had mastered this ethos from Bidandi, who groomed him to be the leader right from an early age when he joined KCC in 1971 while the club was in the second division.
THE STAR
Kirunda was already an assured starter in KCC by the time it joined the top-flight in 1974 and within a yeah, he was the only player to be given the liberty to choose a position to play.
That was almost unheard of before because Janeri Bidandi Ssali always preferred to have players that establish themselves in a particular position. Not even the immensely-talented Phillip Omondi had this leverage. But Kirunda was special. He had a good height, great vision, physically strong and delivered every time he broke forward in search of a goal.
Some players often felt he was treated differently but there was hardly any weakness to point in Kirunda’s game. Off the pitch, Kirunda was appointed he KCC sports officer, a position that made the supervisor of all sporting teams affiliated to KCC. This was a powerful office that made him busy throughout his life. Yet somehow, Kirunda hardly put a foot wrong and backed up his defensive prowess with many memorable goals.
THE LEADER
One of the most intriguing debates in KCC is why he was never club captain yet he captained The Cranes for a decade. The simple answer is that he didn’t need to be. Sam Musenze, the captain, reported to Kirunda’s office. And Bidandi didn’t need to task Kirunda with everything in the team.
At KCC, Kirunda was the de facto team leader with only Bidandi and Jack Ibaale, the club chairman, ahead of him. To understand how he was a colossal figure Kirunda was, he was part of the management that drew the club budget, who to recruit or even who to sack.
On the pitch, he scored goals with reckless abandon and was often the difference between KCC and the many titles won. In The Cranes, Kirunda set the bar so high that officials often gave him different rules from teammates.
THE INSPIRATION
To his peers at KCC and in The Cranes, Kirunda never laid out rules but every player knew the line that cannot be crossed with Kirunda. If a player underperformed on the pitch, he knew Kirunda would be the person to decide his fate. So, there was always no room for complacency when Kirunda is around.
Temperamental forward Godfrey Kateregga had a knack of talking back to anyone, including Bidandi, but when it came to Kirunda, he coiled and carried his bag like a personal aide. If a player wanted to play for KCC, the right person to show your quality was Kirunda, not the team scouts.
The turning point came at the end of the 1981 season when Kirunda felt his influence in the team was being undermined. He wanted to prove a point. That point, unfortunately, would change the trajectory of his career for good. One morning, he walked away from the team and joined SC Villa.
This was unbelievable. It was abominable that the person being groomed to take over the club in future was in bed with a bitter rival. Kirunda proved his point when he helped Villa win the 1982 league crown without losing a game. With the feat was voted sports personality of the year.
Afterwards, he made a U-turn and returned but his decision had left a scar of betrayal on the KCC faithful. He was never the invincible who influenced everything. The position of sports officer was not given back to him and his loyalty in the team started to be questioned by critics.
Nonetheless, Kirunda continued to do what he did best – leading by example on and off the pitch – but his performances and decisions started to come under scrutiny. Kirunda would later become disillusioned and in 1985, he left KCC after 14 years to join Buikwe Red Stars. He needed a new challenge but he also wanted to get away from a place where he evoked mixed feelings.
That, unfortunately, only served to alienate him from his KCC family and by the time he hung up boots in 1986, he had detached himself from many of his contemporaries. A stint at Cooperative FC as coach didn’t yield any tangible success and Kirunda being a person not used to failure, quit football for good in 1990.
LEGACY
In the last days of his life, there was a high chance that if you met Kirunda on the street, you would not recognize him. He felt abandoned by the football authorities but it also had to do with his decision to take a back seat in football matters.
His last active stint as the technical advisor for the Fufa president ended abruptly in 2013. Since then, he remained in the background but in Kirunda, I have never seen a player whose influence transcended all forms of the game.
