FACES OF THE UAE
From a handful of expats playing ball in the desert sand to becoming a world class event, Rugby in Dubai has come a long way. Esha Nag speaks to Gary Chapman, the man behind the sport’s stupendous growth
We speak with Gary Chapman on the triumphant journey rugby has been on over the decades in the UAE.
What has rugby taught you, I ask Gary Chapman in his beautiful office overlooking the runway at the Dubai International Airport Terminal 3. Chapman, President Group Services & Dnata at the Emirates Group replies almost instantly, ‘It’s a grounded sport, not overtly complicated and it doesn’t suffer prima donnas. It teaches you no one is bigger than the team.’ Coming from Chapman, who has been the driving force in turning the Dubai Rugby Sevens from a local event into a major international tournament with a huge spectator following around the world, this means much and underlines the connection between the sport and Dubai’s expat community over the last 30 years. It has connected different nationalities on the field and off it, teaching people respect for one another, team work and camaraderie.
Chapman, who joined the Emirates Group in 1989, was already familiar with the Exiles Club in Dubai while working in Bahrain. Originally from New Zealand, he was no stranger to the sport and began frequenting the Exiles ground in Al Aweer, next to the Dubai Country Club and the Darjeeling Cricket Club. ‘There was this whole feeling of a community,’ Chapman remembers as he talks about the late eighties when Emirates Airline was a tournament sponsor at the Exiles Club.
In those early days the game was played on sand. ‘There was much less to do socially and sport was a great way of connecting people with common values and culture. With the cricket club, the country club and the Exiles Club, the whole place was a magnet people would be drawn to. We had players like Jonah Lomu coming to play in Dubai as did many of the international rugby players,’ he says.
Going back in time, in the seventies, the plot at the Exiles Club was donated by the late Shaikh Rashid bin Saeed Al Maktoum, who was also the patron of the club.
Tired of the long hot desert nights, British expats in Dubai started playing the game and the Exiles first match was against the British Armed Forces in neighbouring Sharjah in 1970. The Staffordshire Regiment becoming the first ever Dubai Rugby Sevens champions. In those days a handful of spectators were scattered along the side-lines, some of them even sat on the back of lorries to watch the action on a sand pitch with marking made from bitumen.
‘Back then there was Peter Hill who managed things at the Exiles Rugby Club from an Emirates perspective. When he left in the early nineties Sir Maurice Flanagan asked me to pick up from where he left. The fact that I was from NZ and knew much about rugby made me fit the bill, I suppose,’ says Chapman. Thus began Chapman’s long association with the sport in Dubai. He initially worked with Jim Lees, who was then the chairman of the Exiles, and his team. ‘The events started getting bigger, and we worked with the Exiles to add more pitches and more facilities. We started getting involved in the tournament more than just a sponsor. At that point we were also concerned about the right kind of publicity – about getting the Dubai message out there to the world through the Dubai Sevens,’ he says.
Chapman worked with Hourglass, a television production company in the UK, and pushed the Emirates Airline Dubai Rugby Sevens to have a global television coverage. So besides drawing in record-breaking crowds on
the ground, the Dubai Sevens is also broadcast to bigger global audiences every year.
As the tournament enters its 50th year in 2019, Chapman says it has been the longest running sports event in the Middle East, and is well established as Dubai’s biggest and most favourite sporting event. ‘It’s incredible how Dubai has been supportive of this sort of thing. Right from the beginning I think Dubai understood that it was important for the expats to have a community and it also recognised that from a Dubai Inc. perspective, rugby was a very valuable sporting proposition.’ Long before the golf and the tennis you had rugby, says Chapman. ‘And it is now without a doubt the best rugby sevens tournament in the world. What we have created in Dubai is a festival of rugby; we realised we were the guardians of what was built by people who came in before us and we built on those values and made it better.’
The journey from the old Exiles Club to the new Sevens Stadium in 2008 was not easy for Chapman. ‘As the popularity of the sport grew, Emirates added more pitches at the Exiles Club and slowly started getting involved in the running and the management of the Dubai Sevens. From organising a tent, and a carpet and an ice box full of refreshments, we became more hand-on as an organiser and through the sport developed good relationships with people in rugby from around the world.”
And then Chapman received a proposal that could potentially turn things around for the sport in Dubai. Would Dubai like to host the World Cup Rugby Sevens? He remembers telling himself that it would be a lot of hard work, but at the same time went to his chairman, Sheikh Ahmed Bin Saeed Al Maktoum to sound out the proposal. ‘I told the chairman that we have an opportunity to bring the World Cup Rugby Sevens to Dubai, but it would mean a lot of work and I would have to travel and meet people. He simply said, ‘‘I want you to go and get it.”’
The following year saw Chapman work closely with the Arabian Gulf Rugby Football Union, submitting a bid. ‘We were up against countries like Australia and South Africa. We went around the world, meeting various rugby unions, and got them to support the Dubai bid and to emphasise the benefits of having it in Dubai. We were finally successful.’ When asked what led the decision to be in favour of Dubai, Chapman says, ‘The Chairman of the International Rugby Board was a guy called Sid Miller and he liked what we had done with the Dubai Sevens. He knew us, he knew the Emirates brand, and he knew what Dubai was doing. He encouraged us and that helped. Our selling point was Dubai, we had the complete support of the city and we had Emirates behind us. We were taking people to a new place, and putting rugby on a global map. I think that’s what clicked.’
The World Cup Rugby Sevens were scheduled in Dubai in March 2009. It was late in 2007 Chapman got the news that the government needed to take over the Exiles club ground for the Meydan project, part of Dubai’s rapid urban sprawl.
‘I went to my chairman and said Your Highness we now have the world cup but there’s nowhere to play. We were immediately allocated some land on the road to Al Ain, but with just about a year in hand (as we had planned to open The Sevens Stadium in December 2008 to host the Emirates Airline Dubai Rugby Sevens that year), it seemed a gargantuan task at hand,’ remembers Chapman.
With Dubai busy with huge construction projects in 2007, getting someone to take on this mammoth task was not easy. ‘I had taken over the responsibility of Sevens as a hobby, but now it had grown into a monster. I finally ended up speaking to friends who recommended a project manager from New Zealand. He came onsite in 24 hours and project managed it for us to have the new facility ready by December 2008. It was an enormous undertaking – with no water, no proper road conditions, no electricity, we managed to change the barren desert conditions to have the successful rugby world cup in 2009.’
With eight pitches, a club house, a stand and a changing room, the new Sevens stadium still retains the old feel of the Exiles Club. ‘I didn’t want a permanent seating for 40,000 to 50,000 people. So to retain the old flavour we still have a temporary set up for the seating, where people can move around, walk around the pitch, and get close to the game. It’s a very personal experience. People were at first very nervous about changing the venue, and the magic of what made that work. But we recreated a very good offering and in building this facility we have also created a space for other sports.’
The new Sevens Stadium has netball facilities, American football, the arsenal soccer school, four cricket pitches. From a community perspective it has lots of good sports happening here and lots of great family entertainment. “We have to remember that we now compete with tennis, golf, the race to Dubai, Formula One in Abu Dhabi, but despite this we have tried to keep the Dubai Sevens attractive. There is great family atmosphere, entertainment for children and when you get tired of the activities, you can watch some rugby.’
As preparations for the 50th year of the Emirates Airline Dubai Rugby Sevens start to get underway, the biggest achievement for Chapman has perhaps been to push the sport in local schools. ‘Rugby is not a sport you would associate with the Emiratis, they have their football. But with the UAE Rugby Federation taking an interest to promote the sport in local schools, we hope that the school rugby programme at the local level will soon become popular.’