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Bahrain Rugby Football Club’s (BRFC) first XV registered the biggest victory of this season’s Gulf Top Six competition so far as they stuck a half-century of points on former heavyweights Dubai Exiles ... and next up this weekend they face runaway leaders Abu Dhabi Harlequins.
It was the second successive win for Bahrain in a crucial run of three home games on the trot and the maximum five match points saw them leapfrog Dubai Hurricanes into fourth place in the hotly-contested league.
First half scores from Tom Ham, Arron Dalgarno and Ollie Hunt set the tone for the day and although the Exiles did register three points from an early penalty, it was all one-way traffic after the break as Tom (TJ) Jankowski, twice, Caleb Anderson and Jack Ward all crossed for tries and scrum-half Rich Ryan added an impressive 15 points from the boot to round off the 50-3 rout.
Interim skipper Ham was delighted with last Friday’s result but remains cautious ahead of this weekend’s meeting with Abu Dhabi Harlequins.
“To score 50 points in a competition as tight as this one and especially to do it against the Exiles, you have to be happy,” he beamed.
“For so many years the Exiles were the team to beat in this league and, although I know they didn’t exactly travel with their full complement, it was great to give our supporters a result like that to be proud of.
“The funny thing about it is that we don’t even feel like we played particularly well. We were perhaps a bit panicky in the first half and made a lot of errors that are quite uncharacteristic of this team.
“We are certainly capable of playing much better than that and we have shown as much in certain periods of our home wins this season. Abu Dhabi won’t let us make the kind of mistakes we made against the Exiles so we’re going to have to produce an 80-minute performance if we’re to stand any chance.”
Indeed, the Harlequins are the only team to have won all their league matches so far, scoring over 210 points in the process, and they will travel to Bahrain on Friday on the back of a 16-5 victory over their nearest challengers, the Jebel Ali Dragons.
Friday’s game will be a huge test for the home team and how far they have come this season but the hosts will be buoyed by the knowledge that they held their own against the table-toppers for most of their earlier metting in the UAE back in January.
On that occasion, Bahrain held the lead at the 50-minute mark before being ripped apart by a second-half blitz, so there will also be an element of unfinished business to attend to this coming Friday.
“There’s no doubting Abu Dhabi are a very good side and clearly the form team in this competition at the current time,” said Ham, “But we’ve no reason to fear them and we will go out there on Friday looking to extend our winning home run as we have done over the last couple of weeks.
“Although there are still a few rounds of the league to go, this match is probably the biggest this team has been involved in for a number of years and it could have a huge bearing on how our season pans out so we can’t afford to hold anything back.”
Friday’s game at Bahrain RFC in Saar, which kicks off at 3.30pm and will be followed by another now-famous after-match party, will take place alongside a special charity cricket tournament run by the Rotary Club of Adliya.
The tournament is the signature fund-raising event of the Rotary Club’s calendar and this year will feature six locally-based teams representing the nations of India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, England, Australia and the ‘Rest of the World’.
The action will get underway at 8am on Friday and will run right through the day, with a full programme of children’s activities and family entertainment taking place on the sidelines.
