Egg Chasing

This weekend saw the Rugby 7’s take over Dubai. The event is massively popular, with rugby fans from all over the world flying in. I’ve watched 7’s before, at the Commonwealth Games, and loved it – so much faster and more interesting than ‘normal’ rugby.

The Dubai Rugby 7’s is slightly different – in that it is one enormous party. And I mean, PARTY.
The event was held in a purpose built stadium about half an hour out into the desert. And it was pretty impressive, a vast thing with lots of activities, food, and of course booze.

We arrived with a group of friends from work, and also met up with the lovely Roz, who was over for the event. It seems obligatory for everyone to wear fancy dress – there were male Baywatch lifeguards (“my eyes are up here love” one of them said to me – well, if you will put it all out there…), sumo wrestlers, and nuns. My favourite outfits? The large group of bananas sat in the stand next to us…..

I was surprised by how little attention people paid to the actual rugby, with a lot of singing, dancing and general revelry in between and during the games. The atmosphere was amazing – even when South Africa beat us in the final it didn’t dampen anyone’s spirits.

Thankfully we’d had the foresight to arrange a driver to take us home – I didn’t fancy a 4 hour queue for a taxi – and we made it home tired but happy by about 10.30. That was over 9 hours of partying. Well, you have to let your hair down once in a while.