For more than a decade, the idea a UAE player might realistically think they could play at a Rugby World Cup was far-fetched.
Even before the national team started bouncing around the middle reaches of Asian competition, alongside the also-rans of the continental game, it will have seemed an impossible dream.
The World Cup was a closed shop. Admission was open only to 20 of the best-established sides, with the one spot in Asia saved for the powerhouses from Japan.
Still, the part-time players from the Emirates were having a nice look round. They played tournaments in Tashkent, Thailand and Malaysia. Some years they did not even play at all.
In 2023, the entire international programme amounted to two matches, both in Lahore, as they beat Pakistan 95-0 then 93-3.
It was hardly international sport, but it did mean they were admitted back to the top flight of Asian competition for the first time in 11 years.
When they got there, they had little idea of where to measure themselves. Hong Kong duly put them to the sword in the first match of the 2024 Asia Rugby Championship (ARC). That had happened regularly since the UAE first took the place of the Arabian Gulf in international rugby in 2011.
Then South Korea came to Dubai, and the goalposts moved. The Koreans wilted in the heat of the UAE summer, the national team mounted a rousing comeback, and they notched a first ever win against that opposition.
When the UAE then backed that up with a thrashing of Malaysia at the same venue, all of a sudden the perspective had completely altered.
They had won silver in the ARC for the first time. If they repeat that this season, they will enter a playoff process to go to the World Cup – newly expanded to 24 teams – in Australia in 2027.
Go one better, and they will be at the World Cup directly as champions of the ARC.
They are under no illusions: it is a tough road ahead, starting with Hong Kong on Saturday. But potentially they are now three wins away from achieving the impossible dream.
“Last year, we went into it kind of unknown as a lot of us hadn’t played at that level before,” said Andrew Semple, the Abu Dhabi-based schoolteacher who is one of the co-captains of the national team.
“Hong Kong was the first higher tier match we had played in and initially it was a bit of a shock to the system.
“But by the time of the Korea match we were ready. They were 33rd in the world, and there was a buzz in the side after that game.
“That continued against Malaysia, and now we have a good feeling in the squad. We have some new guys who have come in, and some [UAE-qualified players] who have come in from England as well.
“There is a buzz and the belief that we can go and do this, from being massive underdogs to make it to the World Cup.”
They remain underdogs. Hong Kong have been the best side in Asia, outside of Japan, for the past nine years. But Jacques Benade, the UAE coach, says his side have the ambition to overhaul them.
“We have to be top one if you want to be 100 per cent sure you can get [to the World Cup],” Benade said.
“It is tough if you finish second to go through, but our target is to be first or second to give ourselves that opportunity.
“We know Hong Kong is going to be tough, but if we can get a good result in these conditions, you just never know.
“We finished second last year. South Korea might have come down without their full team, and the conditions were poor for them, but we have to go to them and get a good result. If we can finish top, it will be magic.”
Like last year, when Korea and Malaysia struggled with the extreme heat of June in Dubai, the UAE hope conditions work in their favour on Saturday.
The national team once won a Test match in Dubai against Kazakhstan after kicking off at 4pm in late April. The sapped Kazakhs were left fuming afterwards, saying that they would stage the return fixture in Siberia.
This weekend’s game against Hong Kong at the Sevens in Dubai will be played in the evening, even though Benade said he would have liked to have played it even earlier.
“We need to be fit if we want to play our rugby, but we also look at the conditions,” Benade said.
“We would have loved to have played the game at 3pm. It is going to be difficult. We know that they are going to come and play and that is what we want to do.
“Our kicking game needs to be 100 per cent secure, take every point that is on offer, then come back and make sure our defence works really hard, and put them under pressure.
“We also need to starve them of the ball, make them work for it, get them frustrated. We have put a lot of time into it.”
The UAE have also benefitted from more time together as a team than ever before. They had a training camp in October ahead of November Test matches against Zimbabwe and Germany. And they had a tour to Kenya as preparation for the ARC.
“Thankfully, we were able to go to Kenya, and it worked out for both of us,” Semple said of a Kenya side who are also preparing for African qualifying.
“It is one thing playing amongst ourselves in the club game here, but playing against that standard of opposition who, on paper, are slightly better than us, is really good.
“It gave us that contact practice and playing at altitude was good for the lungs as well. It was really beneficial.”
