New coach's wide-angle lens on future of Abu Dhabi Saracens

The South African Steve Botha is not looking at short-term answers to take the UAE rugby union club side forward, writes Paul Radley.

Steve Botha has overseen four training sessions with the Abu Dhabi Saracens so far. Sammy Dallal / The National
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First they moved into their city. Now they are commandeering a corner of their home ground at Zayed Sports City.

Abu Dhabi Harlequins must feel like they are being stalked by their upstart rivals, the Saracens, who restart their season this afternoon when they face Dubai Wasps in the Gulf Conference.

In the same week Saracens, the London club with which they are aligned, unveiled their own new ground, Abu Dhabi's second club have relocated, too.

While the changing rooms at Al Ghazal are being renovated, Saracens are set to borrow a field at Sports City, the permanent home of Quins, for the remainder of this season.

For much of their existence over the past year and a half, the capital's younger club have been little more than a minor curiosity to their better-established neighbours.

However, they have made two more moves towards being noticed since the turn of the year, first with the appointment of a new head coach, Steve Botha, and now by moving on to their patch – albeit temporarily.

Botha, who is assisting the club's director of rugby Tui Waruhia, serves as the Saracens first-team coach in his time off from heading up the new Sharks UAE rugby academy.

After two weeks in his new role, today's meeting with Wasps will be his first opportunity to run the rule over his new charges in match action.

"There is a lot of work to be done but there are a lot of players with a lot of potential at Saracens," said Botha, a former scrum-half from Pietermaritzburg in South Africa.

"It is a work in progress and it is not going to happen overnight. There are some things we can put in place now that will benefit the club in the long term. We need a common structure and philosophy for how we want to play the game. Hopefully it will benefit the players and the club and that is the most important thing."

Botha's appointment is the latest step for a club seeking to make up ground on their city rivals Quins, who are also in action at Sports City this afternoon against Dubai Exiles, in the future. "He has had four training sessions with the players so far, and they are very dynamic," said Steve Arnott, the Saracens chairman.

"It is fantastic for the club to have him and we are hoping to see an improvement in results in the second half of the season."

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