This year was the 25th Anniversary of the Intergulf Netball Tournament.
It is the largest sporting tournament for women in the Gulf Region, and includes almost 300 players from all of the GCC Countries. The first tournament was held in 1986 were only seven teams from Oman, Bahrain, Abu Dhabi and Dubai participated in the inaugural event, which on that occasion was won by Oman.
This years Tournament was hosted by Al Ain Netball Club and was held at the Al Ain Hilton. The Event regularly attracts umpires and officials from U.K., New Zealand and South Africa many of who take an active part in developing netball and umpiring standards across the Gulf throughout the year. This year was no exception with six IFNA umpires being brought in from the U.K.
It was in 1996 that Fujairah last entered a team into the Intergulf, way back then we practiced on an old tennis court belonging to Fujairah Trade Centre. That year Fujairah Trade Centre kindly sponsored our kit, we wore it with pride supporting the Trade Centre logo. Now 15 years later I approached Fujairah Trade Centre amongst some other local companies to see if they would support our team once more, to our delight they accepted, helping us out with some of the cost of expenses for the weekend.
We have a great bunch of people playing netball at the moment, and I thank them all for supporting us in the run up to the Tournament. We would also like to thank Kirk and his staff at the Fujairah Tennis and Country Club for providing us with all the court time we needed for extra practice sessions and of course our celebratory party.
As it has been a while since most of us have played competitive netball, with some of the team never having played competitively. We thought it would be a good option to enter into the Social pool. This pool witnessed nine teams from around the region, which meant eight games each, to play on day one.
Day one, our first match was against BSAK2 a spritely bunch of young teenage ladies, who despite having youth on their side did not have the experience to hold off Fujairah. We won the game by 13 goals to 8, a good start for the team from the Mountains!
Unfortunately, our spirits didn’t stay high for very long, as in our next game we faced Kuwait B, a well established team with a dubious defense, score 9-4 to them.
Game three was a different story, with our shooters on great form we managed to beat Al Ain Social by 15 goals to 1, an excellent result for Fujairah. Next we found ourselves up against Qatar Al Khor, who regrettably had a very tall and strong defense, we were defeated by 10 goals to 1.
We knew the following game would be a tough one against Dubai Social, however it turned out to be a very exciting and surprisingly well matched game. With the score standing at 8 each with 30 seconds to go, we were disappointed to say the least that they just managed to pip us at the post, leaving the score at 9-8 to them.
Another very close game was against Bahrain DH Elles, with our defense equally matching theirs it was a tight race to the finish, but by the final whistle they had managed to score two more than us.
At this point, it was midday, with temperatures rising and energy levels falling, sadly we lost our last two games, one to another team from Bahrain and the other to the eventual Social cup winners BSAK1.
Our last game of the day was at 4.50 pm, it had been a long hot day, and unfortunately there was not much time for rest, as all our team attended the Gala Dinner held in the Ballroom. It was a good social evening with music and dancing and quite a few laughs!
Day Two, a new day saw the Social Pool split into two smaller pools with a handicap system put in place, Fujairah was now in the Social Fun. We had three games to play, our first being against Dubai social the team that had won us by one goal the day before, we were out for revenge! We started the game with a one goal advantage, but soon managed to stretch our lead. Everything seemed to come together in this game, with every player giving their all, for me it was probably one of our best games of the Tournament. We held on to our lead and won the game comfortably by 16 goals to 8.
On a high from our victory, we decided to put the same team out against BSAK 2 as we were starting this game with a 4 point disadvantage. It was going to be a struggle to bring the 4 points back, but with another smooth flowing performance from the Fujairah team, we did just that and more, final score 14-7 to us.
In our final game Al Ain social had a 5 point lead on us at the start, unfortunately their was a mix up with the umpires, which delayed the start of play by two minutes. This delay cost us dearly as we lost the game by one goal, knowing we could have easily won it having the extra couple of minutes was frustrating.
The frustration disappeared later in the day when we found out that we had come top of our pool and won the Social Fun competition!
We would like to thank everyone for their support and especially our sponsors, Azaliya, Fujairah Observer, Fujairah Trade Centre, Le Meridien Al Aqah and Scamp. A great start back to the Tournament ladies. Well done! Here’s to next year!
Julie Buck
