JEDDAH: The Dubai Rugby Sevens tournament opened on Thursday with the traditional round of club teams from around the world competing for the club cup.

Entrants represented the increasing spread of interest across the world for the game with teams from Tehran, Islamabad and Sri Lanka up against GCC clubs. British and Welsh clubs, among others, represented the more traditional rugby countries. The team Urdd Gobaith Cymru from Wales provide the commentator with some interesting linguistic gymnastics to perform.

Conspicuous by its absence was a team registered as “Saudi”. Failing to show up for registration, their scheduled opponents, the Pie and Pint Pilgrims, and the Cairo Crocs both won the match as a bye. The team was to have featured a majority of Saudi players but circumstances arose that forced their absence.

However, the Kingdom did field one team — Riyadh. Something of a scratch team, their lack of opportunity to train as a team, ball skills and coordination of tactics produced two matches that saw them roundly defeated on both runouts.

The first match, against the Dubai Dragons, showed the team’s lack of coordination as they never managed to use the threes effectively as they were hampered by the Dragons determined tackling and their ability to snatch the ball out of Riyadh’s hand and slice through a scattered defense with ease. The Dragons ran in three tries, the first of which was converted, in the first half. The second half, despite tremendous spirit but low skills from Riyadh, saw four more converted tries and produced a score of 45points to nil.

Three hours later, Doha repeated the onslaught, running with ease and precision through Riyadh and racking up 43 points to nil. However, in the last quarter, Riyadh mounted a brief and spectacular rally and ran through Doha’s line only to be brought up short by handling errors and lack of coordinated passing.

Lat year, Riyadh and Jeddah starred some outstanding Saudi players. Riyadh was without them this year and it showed. Jeddah, weakened by the loss of four of their key players to the demands of the school timetable by swine flu precautionary measures, begin their campaign Friday.

The Dubai Rugby Sevens is not just about playing the game to win, although that is an important element. It is a celebration of rugby as a game and is a gathering of thousands of families and rugby lover in a three-day festival of sport. Club rugby ranges from the social to the deadly serious but whatever the skill level or the dedication of the team is, the element of pure fun and enjoyment binds a temporary community of 35,000 spectators and 161 teams together in one place for three days with never a hint of trouble. Football and even cricket has serious problems with crowd violence whereas rugby has seen the ritual violence only on the field.

Fancy dress, flamboyancy and fun are the keys to the event, most especially at club level.

Today the serious business of professional sevens rugby begins with the 16 international teams vying for honors.

South Africa have to defend their last year’s Dubai title, and there are many teams that would like to se it toppled. Certainly there are several that could do it; England, Samoa and New Zealand are among the favorites but as is the nature of the sport, the battle for dominance could turn in an instant and a favoured team lose in a five second sprint with the ball from an intercepted pass. One guarantee is that the international matches will be edge-of-the seat stuff.