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Ice hockey among the dunes
- Pressball.by
Andrei Kudin, Keramin Minsk goalie, speaks about ice hockey in UAE where he spent last year.
Current third Keramin Minsk goalkeeper (and goalkeeper coach) Andrei Kudin has told many interesting facts about ice hockey in the United Arab Emirates in an interview to the Belarusian sports magazine Pressball. Last season he played there for a club named Al-Wahda.
First of all, the popularity of this sport is growing really fast in the United Arab Emirates. There are many Canadians that live and work there - and that was the first push to create a domestic league. They wanted to have their favorite game there. There are however not only Canadians in the league. There are even two teams that consist basically of domestic players.
There are 6-8 teams in the league and the number depends on the work permits of the competitors (they are usually for 3 years). All teams are completely amateur. They really love to play and there are only rare occasions when somebody doesn’t arrive to a game.
The only foreigners that move to the United Arab Emirates mainly for the ice hockey are from Belarus. Some of them are coaching. The number of foreigners is now limited because too many foreigners "prevents to develop young domestics talents".
It may be hard to believe, but Belarus president Lukashenko has been one of the main reasons to the development. What happened is that Lukashenko visited the United Arab Emirates and organized a friendly game with his team. A sheikh, who is now the president of the United Arab Emirates hockey federation, saw the game and really loved it. That is possibly the reason why only Belarusians get invitations to play there.
There are three rinks in the country: in Dubai, Abu-Dhabi and Al Ayn – a small town situated in an oasis in the middle of the desert.
The attendance is pretty good and it's always full when play-off is coming.
They don’t have any hockey schools for children in the country but the Canadians buy ice time a few times per year to train their children.
The general level of hockey in the United Arab Emirates is pretty good. Kudin is pretty sure that if they were to play in the IIHF World Championships they would be not on the last place. A good example: Al-Wahda participated in an international tournament in Baden-Baden, where also 3 teams from the third German division and one from the French second division played, and won it.
Story added on 29th October 2006 at 20:08 GMT
Story submitted by: Braginski Gleb.