Full-contact girls rugby thriving in the UAE after a cautious start

On Pitch 8 at The Sevens, Dubai, there is a swarm of girls attending rugby training. On one side of the field, younger players are running through handling drills, while wearing the accessories that mark them out as tag rugby players.

On the other, older teenagers are honing skills including lineout lifting, under the watchful eye of two former international players. These players are involved in the full-contact version of the game.

A decade or so ago, there would scarcely have been this many young girls playing the sport across the whole country. Now, there are scores of players in the junior section of just one club.

Girls’ age-group rugby has expanded to the point that, for the first time in history, the Gulf Under 19 Girls final was hosted on Pitch 1 of the Friday of the Emirates Dubai Sevens at the end of last year.

It was high-class fare, too, with Dubai Exiles – whose training session this was – beating Speranza 22 Academy in front of the jam-packed scaffolding stands.

“I had friends taking videos of me walking back on the bigscreen,” Tara Aksoy, who scored the first try of the final for the Exiles, recalls now of that night. “I was like, ‘That’s me! I’m up there!’ I loved it.”

Aksoy, who turns 18 next month, is Turkish, and has lived in Dubai since she was 10. She has already represented the region in touch, the UAE in the full-contact version, and toured destinations as varied as France and Uzbekistan.

Girls full-contact rugby may be in its infancy in the Middle East, but there are already a number of role models for players to look up to.

Sophie Shams (Dubai Exiles mini, England sevens international)

An Emirati student who is blazing a trail in rugby. She first learnt the game at Dubai Exiles and captained her