Dubai: The biggest challenge before rugby in the UAE will be to ensure a smooth transition for the sport in the next couple of years, according to one of the top officials in the country.
"We already have the UAE and Qatar as members of the Asian Rugby Football Union (ARFU) and Saudi Arabia is working on it at the moment. This is a transition period and things will be clearer in the near future," Andy Cole, Chairman, Arabian Gulf Rugby Football Union (AGRFU) told Gulf News.
As per a ruling from the International Rugby Board (IRB), the world governing body for the sport, the AGRFU will be de-listed from the IRB as of December 31 making way for each of the AGRFU member nations [Lebanon, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, UAE and Saudi Arabia] to have separate ruling bodies.
However, the outgoing chief of the regional rugby body felt they still have a role to play in promoting the sport and taking it to the next level to ensure smooth governance.
Five-year contract
"Honestly, we don't even know who will run this tournament next year. We [AGRFU] negotiated a five-year contract to run the tournament as the host union of the sevens and this is the last year. Now they have to find another union. So whether that will be the UAE ARFU or the Asian Rugby Football Union (ARFU) we don't know," Cole said.
"It's going to be a pretty emotional time for us this weekend. Nothing is going to change as the only thing is that the AGRFU will lose its status as a union. We will continue running rugby here till the end of this season.
"We have a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) in place with the UAE ARFU [headed by Mohammad Falaknaz] till the end of the year and we are likely to renew this so that we continue running rugby till the end of the season. After that we will review again and see where we are," Cole said.
