Dubai: UAE captain Alistair Thompson aims to use this Saturday's "mammoth" Asian Five Nations clash with Japan in Fukuoka, as a barometer to see how they'll fare against their next opponents Kazakhstan.
After an already heavy opening 85-10 home defeat to Hong Kong last weekend, defeat against World Cup performers and Asian No.1 side Japan in match two looks inevitable, especially based on their 111-0 home drubbing to the IRB World No. 14 side in last year's tournament.
The task then turns to the last two games of four against the theoretically more manageable likes of Kazakhstan and South Korea, whom they'll need to beat to ensure group survival. With Japan having eased past Kazakhstan 87-0 in Almaty last weekend, UAE can gauge themselves against the Kazakhs by limiting their deficit against the Japanese.
Keep focus
Thompson said: "Japan beat Kazakhstan convincingly so we'll see this as a chance to compare ourselves against Kazakhstan. The cliche is to keep your focus on the next game, but I'd be lying if I said we weren't now already looking beyond Japan to the last two matches. In the back of our minds is Kazakhstan and Korea.
"The task was to win at least two games in the group and we can still achieve that, even one win could ensure survival. We have a mammoth task ahead of us in Japan but we trust our systems and look forward to making a good account of ourselves. No one wants to say we're going there to lose but we admit it's a massive challenge."
Thompson added: "You can't teach pace and Hong Kong got past the edge of our defence and we realize we need to work on that and improve our cross field movement. We're a new squad of new players and this is only our fourth game together."
