‘Barriers’ to Emirati integration slows UAE rugby growth

The UAE have struggled to find Emirati players such as Majid Al Balooshi, right. Satish Kumar / The National

DUBAI // The country’s leading clubs will meet next week to discuss how to integrate Emirati players within their teams, after failing to reach an agreement with the UAE Rugby Federation on the issue.

Last season, Al Ain Amblers fielded an all-Emirati junior side, the Wolves, under the guidance of the UAE RF’s rugby development officer, Sami Smara.

Now the federation hope a similar initiative will happen for the first time in Dubai, after agreeing a partnership with Arabian Knights.

Roelof Kotze, the performance manager of UAE rugby, is “desperate to get [Emirati] players into clubs” to speed up their ­development.

He said senior UAE nationals, such as Cyrus Homayoun, a member of Jebel Ali Dragons, and Adel Al Hendi, from Abu Dhabi Harlequins, have been imploring their younger colleagues to join clubs.

Qais Al Dhalai, the secretary general of the federation, insists there are “many barriers” preventing young players from simply signing up to the existing clubs.

He said he believes English to Arabic communication is the largest problem and points out that expecting new players from a football-mad community to pay to play rugby is a far-fetched idea.

“How can we attract an Emirati player and tell him to pay to play?” Al Dhalai said. “Pay to play will never work here, I can guarantee that.”

As such, the governing body has agreed to underwrite 80 per cent of membership subscriptions, leaving the clubs to look after the remainder of an Emirati player’s costs.

Arabian Knights, whose senior side play in the second-tier domestic competition yet support a successful junior set-up, are the only club to agree to the plan.

“The only point of dispute was the financial obligation/constraints which might be put onto the clubs,” Kotze said.

“We have been of the opinion from the start that our players need to play club rugby.

“This season is upon us, it is September, and they have to be somewhere within the system. We can’t wait till January, so we had to act.”

Although he said the Knights agreement would act as a template for similar future endeavours, Al Dhalai is disappointed a wider agreement has not been reached.

“I was looking for more commitment from the clubs,” he said. “I don’t care if it was 50, 60 – we could have given 100 per cent – we can afford that, but if anything comes easy it will vanish easy. We need the commitment from the clubs.

“The principle is, they have to contribute some way or some how. We do not want to impose anything on them.”

The clubs, who are represented on rugby’s Emirati integration committee by the chairmen of Dubai Exiles and Hurricanes, have a pre-season meeting planned for next week.

“As one of the clubs selected by both the UAE RF and its peers [including Arabian Knights RFC] to represent all the UAE clubs on this issue, I was both surprised and disappointed to read some of the UAE RF’s comments in the press meeting held [on Sunday], and to learn of this new development in this fashion,” said Mike Wolff, the Exiles chairman.

“We have a clubs meeting with the UAE RF on September 9 and I look forward with great interest to discussing some of the comments made by the UAE RF.”

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