Al Ain: UAE rugby coach Roelof Kotze said his side are “in with a chance” of winning next year’s Chennai Sevens after finishing third in the Al Ain Sevens on Saturday.
The Al Ain Sevens serves as a seeding tournament to the Olympic pre-qualifiers for developing Asian nations in Chennai in March, and the winners of Chennai enter Asia’s final-12 Olympic qualifying group.
The UAE beat Jordan 19-7 and Saudi Arabia 44-7 before a 26-0 loss to eventual winners Iran in the pool stages; they then lost 24-14 to Lebanon and beat Afghanistan 14-7 to qualify to the third place play-off, where they beat Jordan 28-7.
“We played really nice sevens,” Kotze told Gulf News. “We just suffered two mishaps against Iran and Lebanon. The boys are hurting because we know we could have beaten Lebanon and that would have got us through to the final, where anything could have happened.
“We’re satisfied but disappointed. Third seed puts us at the top of the pool in Chennai, which should give us an advantage. The players also got to learn new skills from tighter contests in a more competitive tournament, which hasn’t previously been the case when playing bigger teams like Japan and South Korea in the Asian Sevens Series. I think we learnt more here.
“After this weekend it’s not a far-fetched idea that we could win in Chennai. If we can just improve on a few things and keep working on our conditioning, we could be in with a chance.”
Kotze has previously said Olympic qualification was a distant dream, but just making Asia’s final-12 would be a huge achievement.
“We need to prove we belong among Asia’s best and not in the leagues below,” he said.
