Underwater hockey making big waves in the UAE

Gulf News

With the formation of the Pirates in Dubai, the sport is growing in popularity.  Read the full story here: https://bit.ly/3FMT15E  See more videos at https://gulfnews.com/videos Read more Gulf News stories here: https://bit.ly/2HLJ2km  Subscribe to Gulf News on YouTube and watch more of our videos: https://www.youtube.com/user/GulfNewsTV  #UAEnews #Dubai #underwaterhockey

Transcript

00:00Hi, my name's Phil Bedford and I'm one of the founder members and the chairman of the

00:13Clear Patch Underwater Hockey Team, otherwise known as the Pirates, in Dubai.

00:19We've had the sport here since 2017 and our goal is to take it international, to have

00:25the UAE represented on the global stage where it needs to be.

00:29So we're looking for children, for women, for men to come and join us so we can take

00:34the UAE and put it on the map and follow the vision of our leaders.

00:38Hi, welcome to the underwater hockey world.

00:41We are here in Dubai.

00:42My name is MJ and I've been doing underwater hockey for the past three years now and I

00:48fell in love with it the first time I got into the water.

00:51It's amazing, it's a team work.

00:53So since I started, I would like to take this to another level, introduce it more to schools.

01:00We're trying to bring awareness and it's an amazing sport.

01:05I was playing underwater hockey back in the UK and then I learned they were playing underwater

01:09hockey here in Dubai.

01:12I started playing with Phil and the guys and then decided I needed to take this sport into

01:17Abu Dhabi.

01:18So fast forward a few months and I created the Abu Dhabi Ducks, which is our underwater

01:24hockey team in Abu Dhabi.

01:26We have a growing team, we started very small numbers with lots of restrictions and then

01:31we grow to over 30 members strong.

01:34We play in two sessions a week.

01:36So now we have the Abu Dhabi Ducks and the Dubai Pirates.

01:41We like to meet up regularly to play lots of games against each other.

01:45In the future we want to start playing as a UAE team and start having teams go internationally.

01:51It's an amazing sport to get into, especially for young girls because I started playing

01:56when I was in school and it's amazing because the swimming pool levels the playing field

02:02between men and women.

02:03So I've seen little girls with amazing skill take on men and it's a wonderful sport because

02:10it's all about skill and not brute force and it's a lot of fun.

02:13We would like to get a women's team together in Dubai so that we can play for Dubai.

02:20We regularly play against Abu Dhabi but at the moment we would like to have a girl on

02:25girl team.

02:26At the moment we're playing mixed teams so the goal would be to have an all ladies team.

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