UAE v Sri Lanka: Lineout practice in hotel ballrooms, torrential rain, and a vital Rugby World Cup qualifier

The National

a day ago

As they travel to Colombo to face Sri Lanka for their final game in the 2025 Asia Rugby Championship (ARC), the minds of UAE's leading rugby players will be on one thing. Namely, doing everything they can to extend their dream of debuting in the Rugby World Cup in two years' time.
If they beat Sri Lanka – and assuming Hong Kong beat South Korea the following day – the national team will enter a play-off with the second-best side from African qualifying.
Advancing past that point, via a game in Ghana at the end of July, to make it to November's final qualifying event will be a challenge.
But even being in with a shout of qualifying for the sport's showpiece event, in Australia in 2027, shows just how far they have come since starting out as a competitive entity in the very same city 14 years ago.
The region has been represented in international rugby since 1993. Up until 2010, that was under the collective banner of the Arabian Gulf, which included players based around the GCC.
The combined union was disbanded and, in 2011, the UAE took the Gulf's place in international competition. They played a friendly fixture in Morocco, then took part in the Asian Five Nations – as the ARC was then known – for the first time.
Everything seemed new. The colour of the shirts. The logo it carried. There were two Emirati players – Mohannad Shaker and Ali Mohammed – in the squad for the first time.
Ishy Bilady was now the permanent anthem. Until then, the song that was played had been based on which country was hosting the fixture.
Even the elements added to the novelty of the occasion for that Test in Colombo. Torrential overnight rain had turned the pitch at the Ceylonese Rugby & Football Club into a quagmire. It was about as far removed as possible from what the touring players were used to.
'The field was under half a foot of water for pretty much the whole game,' said Sean Hurley, an Australia-born wing who had been the most capped player for the rep side in its previous guise as the Arabian Gulf.
'It dried up right towards the end, but there was a lot of kicking involved, balls in the air, backwards and forwards. I think I've played two games in my life like that.'
The other was for his club side, now known as the Jebel Ali Dragons, on a rare day of rain in the Emirates. It was against what was then the Abu Dhabi Bats – now Harlequins – in the early 2000s, at a rudimentary pitch next to Al Ghazal Golf Club.
'It rained in Abu Dhabi and there was no drainage,' Hurley said. 'We played in maybe a foot of water. Even in my junior years in Australia, we'd never played in soaking conditions like that.
'Obviously, when you play rugby in the Middle East, you get perfect conditions 99 per cent of the time. Even though there were a lot of English guys and we all grew up in countries like that, your skills are not honed to that anymore.
'It became this war of attrition. There were mistakes everywhere. Chris [Jones-Griffiths] and the boys did a great job.'
Jones-Griffiths was the player who said he 'told a little white lie' in order to get a debut cap as a prop. He had never played in the front row before, but was so intent on playing international rugby for the new UAE team that he said he had.
He clearly took to it: Bruce Birtwhistle, the UAE coach, termed him the player of the match as the tourists picked up a 13-13 draw.
That was quite an achievement, given both his dearth of experience as a prop, plus the fact he broke his nose and his cheekbone at the first ruck in the game.
'I turned to whoever was next to me and said, 'Is there something wrong with my eye?'' Jones-Griffiths said.
'They winced and said, 'Yeah, I think you need to get it checked out.' So [Chris Page, UAE's physio] came on and asked if I wanted to come off.
'I said, no, definitely not. Not after just a few seconds, anyway, so I played the rest of the game. Getting that short, sharp hit early doors probably increased the adrenaline and got me through the game.'
Unlike Hurley, Jones-Griffiths felt perfectly at home in the mud. It reminded him of his formative years, back at Ysgol Gyfun Llangefni school in Wales, where his dad, Dai, had been in charge of PE.
'We had a pitch that was pretty much a bog most of the year, so you'd play in ankle deep mud all year round,' Jones-Griffiths said. 'I was in my element. I loved it. It took me right back to my early days.'
As did the atmosphere of being part of a new, representative side. 'It was guys from all the different clubs in the UAE coming together, a lot of guys you bashed heads with on the pitch for the last few years,' Jones-Griffiths said.
'It took me back to schoolboy rugby when you played for your county, rooming with guys you don't really know, and it was great.'
Those schoolboy tours might not have had quite such salubrious accommodation arrangements. For their first competitive tour, the UAE players were billeted in the splendour of the Galle Face Hotel. Which was handy when the rain arrived.
'We did the captain's run in glorious sunshine, and then the night before the game, the heavens opened and it didn't stop,' Jones-Griffiths said.
'We woke up in the morning and it was torrential. The streets were flooded, and we were thinking: is the game going to go ahead?
'It was so bad that we were hoping to practise lineouts in the grounds outside the hotel, but the rain was too heavy.
'There was a big grand ballroom and we practised our lineouts in there before going to the ground. When we got to the ground there were guys sweeping water off the pitch.'
Fourteen years on, Jones-Griffiths has no formal involvement with the game any more, as he splits his time living and working between Abu Dhabi and Riyadh.
But he is thrilled to see the progress of the team, which he and the Class of 2011 helped to start.
'Having the core of the Arabian Gulf squad there, the mentality of representing the region and now representing the country, was reinforced,' Jones-Griffiths said.
'Also, having Yousef and Mohannad Shaker, Cyrus [Homayoun] and some other UAE nationals in the wider squad really helped emphasise the importance that we were doing it for the country.
'When you spend so long in the country here, you are invested in the country and the country has given you so much. It is an absolute honour to represent the country internationally.'