Brief History

Dubai Hurricanes was formed in the autumn of 1999. For our first few years we operated purely as a senior team social club, arranging friendly matches with the established club sides in the UAE and entering 7s and 10s tournaments throughout the Gulf and Asia. Due to the dedication of our volunteers the club has grown significantly during our short history and we have witnessed huge success, and development, both on and off the pitch.

In 2007 we won the Gulf Cup, the Gulf League and the Dubai7s tournament.

In the 2010-11 season we won the first ever Grand Slam in the Middle East, winning the UAE league, the Gulf Top 6-League and the West-Asia Championship Final.

In the 2012-13 Season our Women’s squad also completed the Grand Slam of the Women’s Championship – this was repeated in the 2015-16 Season.

Both our Men’s and Women’s squads have and continue to field players for the UAE RF national teams and previously that of the AG RFU.

Our Veterans section continues to grow and enjoy success, having won the Gulf Veterans 10s Competition for the third success time in 2015 at the World Rugby Dubai 7s, resulting in them winning this competition 11 times out the 13 occasions it has been run.

More recently we won the 2018 and 2019 Dubai7s Gulf Men’s, Women’s and U15s tournaments, and remain the current Dubai7s Champions.

With recently developed links to the Asia Pacific Dragons we now have a pathway for our best forward and back to play in the International World Series 10s competition held in Mauritius, Hong Kong and Toulouse.

Our Mini and Youth Section was established only in the autumn of 2007 and took part in the league half way through the 2008-09 season. Since then it continues to go from strength to strength. We pride ourselves on maintaining the basic rugby family culture, focusing more on development and growth than outright success, which in turn has brought us continued success on the field. Winning is not a necessity it’s a reward.  Since 2005 we have managed to send squads from our U12 to U16 age groups on tour to Australia, Wales, Ireland, South Africa, Japan and Spain, and in 2016 Hong Kong, where the U16 Squad won the U16 International 7s Cup Competition. This led to 5 of the squad being selected to play with Asia Pacific Dragons in the inaugural U18 World Schools Rugby Festival held in Paarl, South Africa in March 2018, creating a development pathway to playing on the international stage.

We have all-girls U11s, U13s, U15s and U18s squads that continue to growing each year, following the development pathway syllabus to Women’s rugby.

In 2012 we opened our academy (‘7he Academy’) available to all rugby players up to the age of 18. This has now evolved into a major facility in introducing UAE nationals into the game, with rugby ambassadors of ex-international players from both the southern and northern hemisphere countries.  The aim of the academy is to provide both high performance and development training to national and expat players who want to further their game.

To celebrate our 15th year of playing rugby the club rebranded in 2013 to bring its image up to date and reflect its values of ‘respect’, sportsmanship and ‘family’.  This was encapsulated with the development of our club mantra (seen on the left) which current and past members all contributed to.  As we look to the future our focus of enjoying our rugby on and off the field will continue and we look forward to increasing our membership which as at the end of the 2015-16 stands at 823 playing members from 42 nations across the rugby world.

Our Netball section was formed towards the end of the 2015-16 season, for the mums and daughters of rugby players, but has grown exponentially to the largest Netball club in UAE boasting over 260 playing members by the end of the 2020-21 season.  Open to players from U6 upwards this provides a complete family experience for club members who have sons and daughters wishing to play sport.  We see this part of the club continuing to grow and, like our rugby section, it established an academy facility for those players who wish to take their game further.

The 2021-22 season will see the introduction of Cricket, with our initial team already competing in friendly matches during the summer months.