The Jebel Ali Dragons were made to work hard against a 14-man Dubai Exiles to earn home field advantage in the UAE Premiership final.
The final game of the regular season saw a crush of teams at the top all vying for a slice of action in the final in two weeks’ time, which will now see the Dubai Hurricanes take on the Dragons in Jebel Ali.
Perennial league leaders Jebel Ali Dragons bounced back from a shock defeat against the Abu Dhabi Saracens last week to register a hard-fought 29-0 win over the Exiles.
While the scoreline looks resounding, the Dragons had to wait for half an hour for their first score and went into the game’s final 20 minutes with the game very much in the balance at 13-0 despite the Exiles losing Dave McGee just before half time.
McGee was sent off for a dump tackle, although it appeared as though the scrum-half-come-winger aborted any dump mid-tackle resulting a red card that left most of the crowd shocked.
Tries from Sean Crombie, Ian Overton, Rory Binder and Taif Dalamie were the inevitable consequence of a Dragons team that dominated the first half and wore the opposition down in the second.
Dragons coach Ross Mills told Sport360: “I know as a team we haven’t really got out of second gear, we have played decent rugby in phases and patches.
“We always knew today would be tough, and it was. We just told ourselves to go out and play the structure. We went out and played the structure we wanted to play, in the first half I thought there was only really one team on the field.
“Second half, they started to come back into it but I always felt that we had too much out wide. I knew if we could get the ball into the areas where we can hurt any team, then it would come. Even in the opening 30 minutes when we hadn’t scored, we still thought it would come.”
While the Dragons utterly dominated the first half – the Exiles got out of their half for the first time in the 20th minute – a sequence of ball-handling errors conspired to deprive them of an early try.
Just before half time, the Dragons finally had their breakthrough when Delamie took a pass from Dan Bell to score the first try of the game, that went unconverted from Bell.
Moments later, the Exiles were down to 14 men, something coach Jan Venter struggled to agree with.
“It was harsh, it was not malicious,” said Venter. “He’s a very small lad, a number 9 on the wing, he went in low and lifted but he didn’t dump him, he aborted it and he fell. A yellow card would have done. At that stage of the game, considering the spirit of the game, I think maybe a penalty and a yellow in the worst case.”
A torrent of tries was expected as a result of McGee’s departure. A Bell penalty followed by a converted try from Overton just after the half put the Dragons firmly in the driving seat.
After holding strong for most of the game, the Exiles succumbed late on allowing Binder to score with 10 minutes left before Crombie went over with the final play of the game.
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