Jebel Ali Dragons coach Ross Mills has not given up hope of retaining the Gulf Top Six, challenging his players to remain unbeaten for the rest of the season.
The Dragons slipped to a third defeat in 2014 on Friday, losing 40- 27 to the Abu Dhabi Harlequins despite dominating for large spells.
They are now 12 points behind leaders, Quins, with only four games to play.
But with Doha also losing on the weekend they are crucially only two points off the second-placed side.
That means with three home matches to come, the Dragons would be well placed to reach the grand final – if one can be scheduled.
“We’ve just set ourselves a target that we want to go undefeated for the rest of the season,” said Mills, whose side finished second in last season’s Gulf Top Six to then beat Quins in the final. “If we do that we’ll finish No2. If we finish No2 it’ll be us in the final with Quins and obviously we went down there last year and turned them over in the final.”
The Jebel Ali outfit won the UAE Premiership in style before Christmas, losing just one game en route to a dominant 37-8 defeat of the Dubai Hurricanes in the final.
And, while their form has undoubtedly tailed off, Mills does not think his side have had a bad season.
“Because we had such a good year last year and we had a good start to the season – we retained the Premiership, won all the sevens (tournaments), won the Dubai Sevens – to come back people look at us and think we’ve had a bad year,” he added. “But look back at last year, we won everything but lost more games. So as a coach I can be really hard on myself and beat myself up, beat the players up – but we’ve lost four games all season.
“Do I think that’s a bad reflection on the club? No I don’t.”
Indeed Mills believes his side have been the victims of bad luck.
On Friday they were the better team for at least 40 minutes, while they were on top in Doha a fortnight ago only to lose once the game had gone to uncontested scrums.
And he believes, recent results aside, the club are in a far stronger position now than they were when sweeping all before them 12 months ago.
He said: “We’re still getting 50 or 60 guys for training, that’s phenomenal. We’re getting emails off players asking why they’re not getting selected. From that perspective when you look at where the club was last year to where it is this year personally I think we’re far, far ahead of where we were but the results have gone against us.”
