Kenyan sevens players strike over bonuses

Nairobi - Kenya's sevens players have refused to take part in training ahead of next week's opening Sevens World Series tournament in Dubai in a standoff with the national federation over bonus payments.

The players are demanding match-by-match bonuses for the 2015-2016 series season totalling about 20 million shillings ($200,000, €189,000) before they resume training, barely a week before the opening leg of the 10-tournament series.

The standoff led to the cancellation of the naming of the final 12-man touring squad on Thursday.

Team captain Andrew Amonde said the players felt betrayed by the Kenya Rugby Union (KRU) which had offered to pay them only a paltry three million shillings as bonus money.

"We want the 20 million shillings to be paid to us by the time we have our next training sessions on Friday and Saturday," Amonde told reporters.

It is not the first time that Kenyan players, who won the Singapore tournament last season, have been at loggerheads with the national federation over pay.

In a long-standing dispute stretching over three seasons, nine of the senior team players were left out of the squad at the start of the 2014-2015 season after they refused to sign new contracts based on their performances in the competition.