ISLAMABAD: The United Arab Emirates (UAE) rugby team on Saturday defeated Pakistan 93-03 to win the second and final match of the Asia Rugby Championship Division 1 at Punjab Football Stadium in the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore.
The final game, which was part of a two-match series, kicked off at 7:30 p.m. Pakistan time. The UAE team seamlessly stole the game from Pakistan from the outset and scored 50 points against the hosts by the half-time.
Pakistan tried to vigorously fight in the second half of the 80-minute match, but the more experienced Middle Eastern side continued to dominate the field, restricting Pakistan to three points while scoring 93 by the end of the game.
“UAE’s national team wins against Pakistan at the [Asia Rugby] Men’s Division 1 with a score of 93-3,” the UAE Rugby Federation announced in a Twitter post.
In the first match between the two teams, which was played on July 5, Pakistan could not score a single point while the UAE bagged a whopping 95, a feat that paved the way for it to smoothly win the series and lift the golden trophy on Saturday.
Rugby is a close-contact team sport in which players have to run with the ball in their hands. In its most common form, a game is played between two teams of 15 players each, using an oval-shaped ball on a rectangular field called a pitch. The field has H-shaped goalposts at both ends.
Pakistan’s national rugby team made its international debut in a match against Sri Lanka in 2003, while the UAE, which had been part of the Arabian Gulf Rugby Football Union since 1974, became a full member of Asia Rugby in 2012.
Pakistan and the UAE regularly have cultural, educational, and business exchanges as well as sports events, which provide a platform for people of both countries to know more about each other and strengthen bilateral ties.
