Sophie Shams shrugs off cold to make long-awaited senior rugby debut — next up, the Dubai Sevens

Sophie Shams, centre, made her senior women's debut earlier this month for the Heartbeat Tigers. Courtesy Jo Shams

DUBAI // The leading female Emirati player made a try-scoring debut in senior women’s rugby this month — despite battling an illness that meant she subsequently missed the next day of school.

Sophie Shams will be playing for Heartbeat Tigers in the Gulf Women’s League at the Emirates Airline Dubai Rugby Sevens next weekend.

Upon turning 17 this month, the Dubai College schoolgirl was able to play for the first time in women’s rugby, as she made her first start for Tigers at a competition in Al Ain.

Despite battling a heavy cold — “mum never lets me have a day off school unless I am dying,” she said — she excelled on debut. She scored a try with her first touch of the ball against Dubai Sharks, and four tries across the course of four games as she was named her team’s player of the tournament.

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“As we drove closer to Al Ain I became progressively more nervous and on top of that I had a shocking cold,” Shams said.

“I felt as if I had waited an eternity to be allowed to play, and it hadn’t helped that I hadn’t had a competitive match for over six months, and I was jumping straight into Division 1.”

Shams has been a highly rated player since primary school, when her extra-curricular activities included ballet, oboe and captaining a school team that was otherwise made up of boys.

She first started playing the game at Dubai Exiles aged four, and has tasted success at the Sevens before, winning a final on Pitch 2 with the Exiles in girls age-group rugby.

However, the Exiles do not have a senior women’s side, hence the switch to Tigers. Her first experience of the women’s game left her with plenty to ponder on how to improve, ahead of the Sevens.

“It was great playing up at the next level of rugby, it is very different to girls, and I realised I had to change my game plan,” she said.

“Ladies is much more physical, faster and they have better skills. It was brilliant getting into the tackles, a lot of the ladies are much bigger than me but I tried to keep low and just floor them.

“Ripping balls is much harder to do now as everyone is so strong, so I will have to think about changing some of my game play.

“One thing I noticed was that my timing is a little off, in girls I found I had quite a lot of time to think what to do, but in ladies I now realise as players are faster I have to draw and pass just that little bit earlier and not get into so much contact.”

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