ABU DHABI // Jaen Botes says there is still plenty he wants to achieve in rugby, as he heads to China to add a UAE sevens cap to the growing list of accolades he has earned in recent times.
This time last year, the Abu Dhabi-based quantity surveyor was mulling over an invitation to return to rugby from the city’s youngest club, Saracens.
Having once seemed set on a professional rugby career, he returned to the UAE from the UK in 2013 and took a year off from the sport to focus on his new job instead.
He rejoined the ranks of the amateur game with Saracens, and since then his ascent has been rapid.
In his first campaign back, he was named the player of the season after guiding the previously unheralded Saracens to the top of the game in the Middle East.
As a reward for his excellence, he was brought in to the UAE XVs side at the first available opportunity, making his debut on the Asian Rugby Championship tour to Malaysia in May.
Now he has been named in the squad for the China Sevens, as the UAE Rugby Federation reintegrate expatriate players into the abridged format for the first time in two years. The powerful No 8 says UAE rugby has revived his affection for the sport.
“I am doing it all for the love of the game,” Botes said. “Any rugby player would like to challenge themselves day in and day out, but these events I have been privileged to be part of are challenges I’ve set myself.
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“We have achieved things with Saracens, but there is so much more to do. There is loads of room for improvement personally, but I am enjoying everything as it goes along.
“I like this league because we have a good bunch of lads and the competition is fairly high at the moment.
“There is a lot to improve on. I haven’t achieved what I want to yet, but hopefully it will come one day.”
Even with Botes and other leading sevens players such as Ian Overton and Chris Marshall in their line-up, the UAE’s mission in China this weekend is set to be a tough one.
They are in a group with Hong Kong and Philippines, which will make advancing tricky.
But Roelof Kotze, the coach, thinks a top-eight finish in the Asian Sevens Series, with tournaments in Thailand and Sri Lanka to follow, should be an attainable goal.
“We should be able to be somewhere in that sort of region,” Kotze said.
The South African said that while the top two of Japan and Hong Kong are consistent, the remaining six “flip around quite a bit and there is not much consistency there”.
Botes says the UAE players are focused on what they can do, not the calibre of the
opposition.
“I’m excited for it because there are lads in our squad who have played a good standard of sevens before,” he said.
“In terms of the rugby in the UAE, there are a lot of good players here and we have to go over there and show them what we can do.”
Emiratis can benefit from recall of expats
The UAE will travel “halfway across the world,” as Roelof Kotze terms the schlep from Dubai to Qingdao for this weekend’s China Sevens, and find out they are back where they started off two years ago.
Having a sevens side comprising a mixture of indigenous and imported talent used to be the norm here until 2013. It might feel a little alien when they are reunited again in competitive action this weekend, though.
The Rugby Federation opted to pick only UAE passport holders after 2013 for two main reasons. Primarily, it wanted game-time exclusively for players who were eligible to help with the pursuit of qualification for Asian and Olympic Games competitions.
Secondly, it felt there was nothing to be lost by throwing in rookie Emiratis, given that results had been indifferent with an expat-dominated side.
Now that Olympic qualification has gone, the game plan has been revised. It felt like the previous measures were hasty and extreme, but it should have had a positive effect on the side’s prospects now.
The five Emiratis involved are far better for the competitive action they have been afforded in the past two years.
There is reason to be optimistic about the side’s chances, notwithstanding the tough opening draw they face against Hong Kong and Philippines.
“It is important,” Apollo Perelini, the UAE Shaheen coach, said of the decision to welcome expatriates back into the fold. “We won’t be able to climb the rankings ladder if we don’t.
“Developing UAE nationals as players is an ongoing process. You can’t expect them to learn the game in the space of two years, then represent a country, knowing you will be up against teams who have players who have been playing all their lives.”
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