During May, the president of the Rugby League Commission (formerly UAE Rugby League) Sol Mokdad was arrested and denied bail after being accused of impersonating the nation’s rugby union body among other unscrupulous charges.

While Sol eventually did eventually sign his innocence away the things he was charged for were innocuous at best and had not been actioned against any other sport. The only charge which could be uniquely levelled at the sport of rugby league was the charge of ‘impersonation’.

For just under two weeks, Sol was held in incarceration. The prosecution argued there was only one rugby which had the right to designate which codes were played and who ran the competitions which these codes were played.

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As a result of UAE Rugby bringing these charges rugby league is not functional in the UAE. The domestic competition was cancelled when Sol was detained and the social media for the Rugby League Commission posted an apology before being deleted – with rumours they were handed over to UAE rugby.

A rapidly growing sport has been cut at the knees and will probably not reach the heights it had for another five years if not longer.

While UAE Rugby operates as normal, no fine, no sanctions, and no indication from World Rugby that it’s going to act on one of its unions violating its edict to evict another sport from the country they operated. A rapidly burgeoning rival has been crushed at no expense whatsoever.

And before the trolls come out to try and argue that rugby league wasn’t anywhere near as sizeable as implied, note that the local competition was sponsored by Nissan and had secured hosting rights to the Middle-East Africa leg of qualifying for the Rugby League World Cup. UAE Rugby League has been making great progress this year.

Rugby league was on the rise and has been cut down spectacularly.

Most interestingly of all, its been cut down by an organisation which hasn’t adopted its sport’s full title: the UAE Rugby Federation. Similarly to the governing body, World Rugby and several other unions such as the Morocco Rugby Federation (another serial abuser of the ambiguity left by the title of its organisation) the UAE branch of rugby union prefers to leave the union at home.



The governing body’s name seems less justified by these means. This is the governing body for the sport of rugby union, surely to avoid confusion they would adopt the full title of the sport.

It’d be like if American football authorities decided the global body for their sport should be called ‘World Football’. There are two distinct sports with the title rugby and the title of ‘World Rugby’ implies that there is only one. For a world governing body, this simply isn’t good enough, there shouldn’t be room for misinterpretation or any ambiguity as to what the body has control over.

And while that might not be a direct edict from World Rugby, the implication has at the very least not helped clear the multiple misconceptions regarding the nature of rugby league and in particular questioning whether it is a separate sport.

Some of these misconceptions have been going on for decades and all have led to the detriment of rugby league.

World Rugby isn’t obligated to help rugby league with anything but as it stands several of its unions and several governments have incorrect interpretations on the sovereign boundaries of the sport. In several cases this is to the sport’s overall benefit, but they are still misinformed.

While they may be pioneers for the of rugby concept in a majority of places, there are two codes of rugby. Misusing the legal process to achieve sporting dominance is not appropriate.