UAE’s winning mix draws first blood on Asian Rugby debut

Smith who holds a Peruvian and an American passport and teaches at an American school in Dubai said the team had hardly had any practice before the tournament. “All our players have been working in the UAE for the past five years. We play rugby on weekends. It was only last year we founded a rugby association and now we are here,” she said.

Coach Tom Hatfield played semi-professional rugby in England,then worked as a chef in Australia before taking the reins of the UAE women’s squad. He said the team put up a good show in their first tournament. “The first two matches were quite bad. We lost all our games but there were some encouraging bits in all those losses. But we bounced back. We played swift and tactically sound rugby,” said the coach.

The team is a mix of members from different walks of life. Hollie Murphy,25,and Aideen Putler,30,are both teachers originally from Ireland. Elke Vinck,35,a mother of five owns a company that makes clothes for babies and moved to the UAE from Belgium nine years ago. Natasha Robinson,22,one of the youngest in the team is a dolphin trainer in Dubai and Stephanie Liwo,19,the baby of the team is a student in Sharjah and is of Cameroonian descent.

Balancing professional commitments and playing rugby for the UAE is a skill perfected by most members of the squad. Emi Beredugo,33,a Human Resources manager with an MNC was conducting interviews on phone between matches. “I don’t get a lot of time off and had to squeeze in a couple of interviews and draft a few proposals during breaks,” she said.

All the members play for different clubs in a cross-border league in the UAE. This league has clubs from UAE,Kuwait and Qatar and is generally an eight-week competition held on weekends. Lynda Bailey,28,from Knoxville,Tennessee in the US says earlier it was difficult for them to gel as a team. “We had always played against each other and in the first few weeks playing in the same team was a rather different experience. We sure did get a lot of yelling from the coach to play as a team,” she said.

An Australian and a New Zealander playing rugby for the same team can have fiery implications. The aptly named Adrienne Speedy,a Kiwi said playing with Fleur Healy,the Australian in the team has been a volatile but enjoyable experience. “We do give each other a lot of lip. You give the Aussies a bit of lip and they get all fired up. Thankfully its all verbal,” chuckled Speedy. She says Healy and she have learnt to keep national affiliations aside when playing for the UAE but then mentioned that it’s quite difficult during international tournaments. “Last year during the World Cup which we (New Zealand) won,I sure riled Fleur with all my Kiwi talk,” she said.

Coach Hatfield and rugby development manager for the UAE,Wayne Marsters said getting Emirati women in the national team is their next big objective. “We have started a few initiatives we hope will encourage Emirati children to take up rugby. It’s going to be a slow process because rugby is not really in the culture of the Emirates. However we are hopeful that our performance and the growing popularity of rugby will aid us in our task,” said Marsters.

Hatfield believes Iran’s acceptance of rugby will act as an example in the UAE. “The Iranian women are getting better and leading rugby’s charge in the Middle East. We believe if Iran can do it,UAE can definitely take a step in that direction,” he said.