Oval Office July 2007

Gulf girls kick on

Exclusive by Warwick George

Women’s rugby in the Gulf is running white-hot, but one of the region’s brightest  stars might be lured elsewhere by other sports.

With 11 wins this season (including significant international victories in Tunisia and Hong Kong), the Arabian Gulf womens rugby team has just wrapped up its most successful season ever.

They achieved an all-time best fourth Asian region ranking making them the most successful Gulf-based rugby team for 2006-2007.

Standout performers were Natasha Robinson, described as a “rangy loose forward with an eye for the try line” by coach Wayne Marsters. Robinson (half Brazilian-half English) is a student at Dubai College and turns out for the Dubai Hurricanes in the Gulf comp.

As with a number of promising young athletes in the Gulf, Robinson has been offered overseas scholarships in Netball and athletics and in the short term may be lost to gulf woman’s rugby.

The other star of the team was captain Jenny Thompson, who hails from Australia and is a teacher at Dubai English School in the Springs. Throughout the season Thompson provided excellent tactical awareness and was a steadying influence to the team’s younger members.

For next season Marsters and team manager  Richard Harris have already introduced planning initiatives and team fitness protocols which they believe will see the girls not only consolidate their ranking in Asia, but keep climbing the ladder.

The recent Test series in the southern hemisphere showed world rugby faces a major crisis due to the lack of a global rugby calendar.

England’s team that was flogged by South Africa, was a rabble of has-beens, England As and one or two established stars. Few will make England’s 2007 World Cup side. The Welsh team that played Australia was rated at best, a Wales C side. In fairness, Wales nearly pulled off an historic win against the underachieving Wallabies.

How did this situation arise? Easy, money - and lots of it if the figures being currently banded around are to be believed. They’re not to be believed – they’re even higher!

In the northern hemisphere, players are contracted to clubs, not their national unions as is the case in the southern hemisphere. Therefore, if there is a clash in fixtures between a player turning out for their club or country, their paymaster wins out.

A prime example of the crisis is the shambles that was the recent French tour of New Zealand. The two-match Test series was played the same weekends that the semi-final and finals of the French club competition were contested. The clubs were understandably loathe to release their best players for a Test series that would not benefit their bottom line.

The options left to the French RFU were to cancel the tour; offer the NZRFU some form of monetary recompense (which they did, but was declined by NZRFU who justifiably wanted competitive games in their build up for the World Cup) or send a sub-standard team. Anyone who wasted their time turning on the telly for some Saturday afternoon’s rugby knows which option won the day.

Ultimately, neither New Zealand nor France benefited from this lopsided series. Plus the all important fans are fast becoming immune to the ‘dribble’ that is Test match rugby. Thank goodness order was restored when the Wallabies and the Boks showed what Test rugby – and a bit of old-fashioned softening-up – was all about.

The International Rugby Board (IRB) has been making noises for years now about developing a global rugby calendar which will align all national unions, and thereby bring some order to an already overly congested club and international season. Nothing has happened!

Obviously there are contentious issues with this, the main one being which hemisphere’s season should be followed – and which competitions may need to be compromised.

From a northern hemisphere stance, club owners have shown a complete unwillingness to budge on reducing fixture congestion - the more club matches played, the more money they make.

As for the southern hemisphere, New Zealand (NPC) and South Africa (Currie Cup) have indicated that they will not

relinquish their respective provincial competitions. Both these competitions are big money earners and player development platforms for these respective national bodies. Add to this the commercial success that is the Super 14, and it can be seen that there are some hurdles to overcome.

Still, the IRB needs to tackle this club v country crisis quickly. 

Not related to the club-country issue, but even worse, is the Boks’ refusal to send a reasonable side to Australia. They took the money for the sell-out matches against the Wallabies and All Blacks at home then refused to field a decent side away. Fans in Australia are sitting there with pre-sale tickets bought because they expected a great game. Supposedly 20 of the top side are suffering fatigue. Poor dears. 

Here’s some good news for the battlers from Iran’s emerging rugby scene. Teheran RFC came to the 7s in Dubai last year and had to do battle in the international overseas category. They punched above their weight and, of course, got belted.

Did they complain? No way. Did they keep getting up and throwing themselves at tackles – many of which they missed? Did they ever.

TRFC was one of the last teams to be confirmed as entrants last year which club treasurer and on-field centre, Chris McGlaughlin said at the time was “a small miracle as the tournament has been oversubscribed for the last four years.”

The boys from over the water had 80 points put on them by the Pyrenees (“mate that’s the French B team basically”, says McGlaughlin) which didn’t do either side a lot of good.

Next time the squad from Iran will be in the local social scene which should see the visitors able to compete.

“We begged,” McGlaughlin told Monthly Maul in Dubai this month when we asked how he managed to get the team from Iran in a lower tier.

Iran is not the first place that comes to mind as a rugby hotbed, but the game there is flourishing.

The initial push came from a motley group of expats from rugby-playing countries who have since introduced the game to young Iranian nationals and novice players from the Indian subcontinent.

“We hope to be able to compete on a more level playing field when we play in Dubai this year,” says Mclaughlin.

“It was pretty gutsy stuff the way the guys kept backing up last year. We played on the main pitch before the big crowd. We know what’s expected now too.

”Rugby is developing in Iran and quite a few of us are committed to its success. We want to get all the appropriate refereeing and coaching qualifications so we can help develop the grass roots of the sport.”     

So, the World Cup is inching closer but are the All Blacks the shoe-in everyone thought? The first 60 minutes of the clash with the Boks the other day showed they can be beaten, the end of the game revealed South Africa can’t finish them off.

But beware the ‘Cat’, the Puma of Argentina.

South Africa are the only team to have beaten the Kiwis in the past three years, but the All Blacks’ possible quarter-final encounter with Argentina looks set to be the ‘rumble in the jungle’ that no-one could have predicted.

Possibly the most underrated side in World rugby, Argentina have slowly climbed up the rankings since giving a Jerry Collins-led All Blacks team a major fright in Buenos Aires at the start of 2006.

The score was 25-19 but if the All Blacks had not been so well-drilled in defence, the final minutes of that match could have derailed the campaign that had taken Henry’s men so long to prepare for. From that match, the Pumas gained the confidence that led them to a super-successful tour of Europe at the end of the year.
Twickenham was first on the Pumas’ schedule and they did not disappoint, defeating a hapless English side, about to lose their coach Andy Robinson, 25-18.

A win in Rome against the Italians, and then a one-point loss to the French cemented a place in the hallowed top 10 for the Argentinians as they built form heading into the World Cup.
A recent 2-0 series whitewash over Ireland, albeit at home, confirmed that Argentina could go all the way in rugby’s grandest tournament. Grouped with France and Ireland as their main competitors, the world could be shocked by how good this team really is.

Leinster star Felipe Contemponi is first-rate, falling just outside the top five outside halves in the game behind Dan Carter, Stephen Larkham, Jonny Wilkinson, Nick Evans and Frederic Michalak. His attacking prowess is world class and he has proven that his boot can be a match winner as well.

Alongside Contemponi, the Pumas are led superbly by Augustin Pichot, the Bristol halfback feeding Contemponi the ball he needs to set up the attacking play the Pumas are famed for.

But the Pumas aren’t just a team of pretty backs; it was the forwards who sent the All Blacks Test to the wire last year. The strength of these men has always been the powerhouse and they have not disappointed while their country has been on the rise.

If Argentina hit the World Cup at their best and qualify for the quarters, it’s not only Graham Henry who should be concerned, but all other World Cup nations will have to be careful to avoid being mauled by the big Cat.

To settle a bet – yes Jeremy Janion did play rugby for a couple of seasons. The classy centre or wing who won 12 caps for England worked in the banking industry in Kuwait and turned out for the then-powerful Scorpions in the late 1970s. 

Got something for us? Drop me a line at monthlymaul@totalsport.ae