Dubai
Roelof Kotze, national coach and performance manager of UAE rugby believes the country is moving in the right direction as it seeks to book a place in the Olympic pre-qualifiers next year. The UAE National 7s team is preparing for their final round of the Asian Rugby Sevens in Beijing to be held on October 18-19 and the South African believes the side has definitely shown marked improvement over the first two rounds.
“There’s been definite improvement from Hong Kong to Kuala Lumpur. Right now, we are preparing for the China Sevens and we hope to keep on improving our game. The boys have been training hard and going through conditioning to get up to speed,” Kotze said.
He added: “Our major target of course is to get into the Olympic pre-qualifiers next year which would be something of an achievement.”
The UAE were due to take part in two Olympic pre-qualifying events for developing unions in Al Ain on October 31-November 1 and in Chennai, India, on November 29-30, but a change of plans means the Al Ain tournament will now act as a seeding competition for Chennai, which will now be moved to February or March of 2015 to satisfy International Olympic Committee (IOC) requirements, which stipulate qualifiers should be held the year before the finals.
“The change of schedule gives us more time to prepare. Following Beijing, we will have the Al Ain event as well as the Dubai Sevens,” Kotze said.
The South African is also pleased with the player development into the clubs “All the Emirati players have bought into the concept of club rugby. They have got it into their heads that playing for the national side is not enough and they also have to play for clubs in order to develop,” he said.
