Doha have already secured their spot in the Gulf Top Six final against Abu Dhabi Saracens but there is still plenty at stake in their final league match against the Jebel Ali Dragons in Dubai tonight.
Victory will confirm home advantage for the championship game, but Saracens will hope the Dragons can do them a favour so the final can be played in Abu Dhabi.
Saracens are top of the table by virtue of Bahrain forfeiting their final match, but a win for Doha will changesee them reclaim first place.
Jaen Botes, the Saracens captain, says he will be rooting for the Dragons today.
“I am a guy for the sport and it won’t go with me in my own interest to favour some team,” he said.
“But we really hope the Dragons can pull something out of the bag and win this game for us.
“They are a great side and it is not impossible for them.
“It will need a lot of work as Doha themselves are a good side and if they click they will be unstoppable.
“We hope the Dragons pull it off so we will have our own final here. That would be fantastic.
“Having said that, it doesn’t matter where we play but we will take the most from the situation and achieve what we want to.”
Saracens’ hopes of securing a home final took an unexpected twist last weekend when Doha ended their unbeaten run with a 31-17 triumph. However, regardless of venue, Botes is delighted by the accomplishments of his team this season.
“Either way we are overwhelmed the club is in the final for the first time in their history,” said the South African.
“We have two major achievements this season — defeating Abu Dhabi Harlequins for the first time in the four-year history of the club and reaching the Gulf Top Six final.
“All in all we are humbled and very excited of our journey.
“We have a lot to learn from last game against Doha.
“We had a look at the video of the match and the majority of the points they scored was from our own mistakes. We will try to narrow those mistakes when we train this week.
“It was a good lesson for us and hopefully we can go wherever and play better next time.”
Botes said it was important the team stayed focused.
“We want to do what we do best, click as a group and stay together as a group and train hard,” he said. “We want to be best prepared going into a final. We don’t mind where it is going to be but we just want to make sure we are prepared for it and make the most of the opportunity.”
In today’s other game Abu Dhabi Harlequins meet Dubai Hurricanes.
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First Person
Richard Flanagan
Chatto & Windus
Dubai Bling season three
Cast: Loujain Adada, Zeina Khoury, Farhana Bodi, Ebraheem Al Samadi, Mona Kattan, and couples Safa & Fahad Siddiqui and DJ Bliss & Danya Mohammed
Rating: 1/5
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Director: Siva
Stars: Suriya, Bobby Deol, Disha Patani, Yogi Babu, Redin Kingsley
Our family matters legal consultant
Name: Hassan Mohsen Elhais
Position: legal consultant with Al Rowaad Advocates and Legal Consultants.
Low turnout
Two months before the first round on April 10, the appetite of voters for the election is low.
Mathieu Gallard, account manager with Ipsos, which conducted the most recent poll, said current forecasts suggested only two-thirds were "very likely" to vote in the first round, compared with a 78 per cent turnout in the 2017 presidential elections.
"It depends on how interesting the campaign is on their main concerns," he told The National. "Just now, it's hard to say who, between Macron and the candidates of the right, would be most affected by a low turnout."
Company profile
Company: Eighty6
Date started: October 2021
Founders: Abdul Kader Saadi and Anwar Nusseibeh
Based: Dubai, UAE
Sector: Hospitality
Size: 25 employees
Funding stage: Pre-series A
Investment: $1 million
Investors: Seed funding, angel investors
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Directed by: Ashwiny Iyer Tiwari
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Three and a half stars
Know your cyber adversaries
Cryptojacking: Compromises a device or network to mine cryptocurrencies without an organisation's knowledge.
Distributed denial-of-service: Floods systems, servers or networks with information, effectively blocking them.
Man-in-the-middle attack: Intercepts two-way communication to obtain information, spy on participants or alter the outcome.
Malware: Installs itself in a network when a user clicks on a compromised link or email attachment.
Phishing: Aims to secure personal information, such as passwords and credit card numbers.
Ransomware: Encrypts user data, denying access and demands a payment to decrypt it.
Spyware: Collects information without the user's knowledge, which is then passed on to bad actors.
Trojans: Create a backdoor into systems, which becomes a point of entry for an attack.
Viruses: Infect applications in a system and replicate themselves as they go, just like their biological counterparts.
Worms: Send copies of themselves to other users or contacts. They don't attack the system, but they overload it.
Zero-day exploit: Exploits a vulnerability in software before a fix is found.
The National Archives, Abu Dhabi
Founded over 50 years ago, the National Archives collects valuable historical material relating to the UAE, and is the oldest and richest archive relating to the Arabian Gulf.
Much of the material can be viewed on line at the Arabian Gulf Digital Archive - https://www.agda.ae/en
Stree
Producer: Maddock Films, Jio Movies
Director: Amar Kaushik
Cast: Rajkummar Rao, Shraddha Kapoor, Pankaj Tripathi, Aparshakti Khurana, Abhishek Banerjee
Rating: 3.5
Recipe
Garlicky shrimp in olive oil
Gambas Al Ajillo
Preparation time: 5 to 10 minutes
Cooking time: 5 minutes
Serves 4
Ingredients
180ml extra virgin olive oil; 4 to 5 large cloves of garlic, minced or pureed (or 3 to 4 garlic scapes, roughly chopped); 1 or 2 small hot red chillies, dried (or ¼ teaspoon dried red chilli flakes); 400g raw prawns, deveined, heads removed and tails left intact; a generous splash of sweet chilli vinegar; sea salt flakes for seasoning; a small handful of fresh flat-leaf parsley, roughly chopped
Method
▶ Heat the oil in a terracotta dish or frying pan. Once the oil is sizzling hot, add the garlic and chilli, stirring continuously for about 10 seconds until golden and aromatic.
▶ Add a splash of sweet chilli vinegar and as it vigorously simmers, releasing perfumed aromas, add the prawns and cook, stirring a few times.
▶ Once the prawns turn pink, after 1 or 2 minutes of cooking, remove from the heat and season with sea salt flakes.
▶ Once the prawns are cool enough to eat, scatter with parsley and serve with small forks or toothpicks as the perfect sharing starter. Finish off with crusty bread to soak up all that flavour-infused olive oil.
Past winners of the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix
2016 Lewis Hamilton (Mercedes-GP)
2015 Nico Rosberg (Mercedes-GP)
2014 Lewis Hamilton (Mercedes-GP)
2013 Sebastian Vettel (Red Bull Racing)
2012 Kimi Raikkonen (Lotus)
2011 Lewis Hamilton (McLaren)
2010 Sebastian Vettel (Red Bull Racing)
2009 Sebastian Vettel (Red Bull Racing)
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Education: Mr Al Bahar was born in 1979 and graduated in 2008 from the Judicial Institute. He took after his father, who was one of the first Emirati lawyers
From Zero
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Label: Warner Records
Number of tracks: 11
Rating: 4/5
