Sharjah: Asian Rugby Football Union’s development officer Ismail Kadir is confident of achieving the target of 15,000 numbers during the HSBC ARFU Coaching Tour that travels to promote the game at the grassroots level.
UAE is their fourth stop after having finished Sri Lanka, Hong Kong and Manila.
“Last year we had targeted around 10,000 kids and we overachieved it. This year we have a target of 15,000 kids and it’s been going great so far,” Kadir told XPRESS.
“We have already got a huge number of around 6,000 kids in Sri Lanka and around 2,000 each in the other two countries.
“We are looking at around 2,000 kids in the UAE. We still have China to go from where we had around 5,000 kids last year.
“So it’s been a positive growth and we are happy the initiative is growing and reaching out to as many kids as possible,” he added.
He said the UAE has been seeing a steady growth due to the efforts from the federation.
“There is a lot of prospect here. The facilities here are really great. They have the indoor and outdoor facilities.
“There is a huge interest among the kids and the UAE Rugby Association is doing a tremendous job organising several tournaments for all age groups,” said the former Singapore national player.
The coaching tour which began from May 6 and goes on till this Friday will be covering seven schools, including two Emirati schools.
Ben van Rooyen, Rugby Development officer with the UAERA, said: “We are trying to cover as many as possible during this coaching tour.
“It’s certainly changed a lot over the past one year, especially with the Emirati boys. There were hardly any boys and now we have the junior Shaheen team which has some real talented boys,” Rooyen said talking about the success of the grassroots level programmes in the UAE.
