APR off to Kagame Cup tournament

APR football club are set to leave today for the 2012 edition of the Cecafa/Kagame Cup Club Championships that gets under way on Saturday in Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania.The three-time champions have never won the trophy on foreign soil and will also be desperate to bury last year’s ghosts when they got eliminated in the group stages.Coach Ernest Brandts’s contract runs out at the end of this month and only a good outing in the competition will convince his bosses to hand him a new deal.The Dutchman played down his team’s favourite tag saying, “Every team that plays in this competition, is a champion of their country, so to say we are going to win it (competition) easily is being wide off the mark,” Brandts said yesterday after the club’s last training session.Despite guiding the army side to two league and cup doubles in two seasons, Brandts has failed to impress beyond the Rwandan boarders.APR were eliminated in the Orange CAF Champions’ League in the first round, despite spending heavily last season after bringing in the likes of Lionel St. Preux, Dan Wagaluka, Johnson Bagoole, Habib Kavuma, Olivier Karekezi, Papy Faty and Ndikumana Seleman, Alex De Avila Peixoto and Douglas Lopes Carneirn.APR is in Group B alongside holders and hosts Yanga Africans of Tanzania, Wau Salam (South Sudan) and Atletico (Burundi).Group A has Simba (Tz), URA (Uganda), Vita Club (DR Congo) and Ports of Djibouti, while Group C is composed of Azam (Tz), Tusker (Kenya) and Mfunzo of Zanzibar.The military side is chasing a treble after sealing the local League and Peace cup.APR will kick off their campaign for a fourth regional title against newcomers Wau Salam in the opening match of the championship on Saturday.

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APR off to Kagame Cup tournament