It is rare to see a woman at a soccer match, here in the UAE. Rarer still, by far, is to see an Emirati woman. A citizen, that is.

So the notion that as many as 25 Emirati women took advantage of a chance to fly over to Bahrain (at Football Association expense) for the Gulf Cup match with the hosts tonight … was certainly news.

Word of the travel plans, made at the request of the UAE Cycling Federation, leaked out yesterday, and when it was confirmed today … Twitter in Arabic blew up.

We at The National decided to follow the conversation.

We designated a young Emirati woman, an intern as well as a soccer fan, to follow the discussion on Twitter, and to pluck out a range of comments to write.

It appeared in this story, which will be in the Wednesday a.m. newspaper.

Unlike neighboring Saudi Arabia, where women are not allowed to drive, nor to leave the country without a male relative accompanying them, women are not banned from doing much of anything, here in the UAE.

Cultural mores, however, serve as a fairly significant check to out-of-the-box thinking.

To our knowledge, women never before had traveled as a group to a UAE match contested outside the country. (And even inside the country, it is very unusual to see Emirati women, in their distinctive black abayas, at a match — even for a club just down the street from where they live.)

If you followed the link, you will see some pretty bold statements from some tweeters along the lines of, “They’re there to represent the UAE, what’s the problem” and “If I had the time, I’d go and take the kids with me.”

But our intern said the comments, which may have exceeded one thousand, were overwhelmingly critical of the idea.

Some cited the Koran, others emphasized cultural norms. Some were fairly bluntly negative. One said Emirati women should not get caught up in the idea of “development” — modernity, Western style. Another suggested women would “lose the spirit of modesty and chastity” if they went off on trips like this one.

The women returned to the UAE on the same day they left, so no hotel was involved. Probably a wise idea: Cultural norms can change, but too big a jump can leave people disoriented.

(Note, in the photo, that the two Emirati women are in abayas, as per usual, and little of their faces are showing, aside from their eyes.)

Still, it was interesting to be in a place at a time when a group of women saw nothing wrong in going to a match outside the country … and the Football Association spent the money to make it happen.

And, the women saw the UAE defeat Bahrain 2-1 to clinch a place in the Gulf Cup semi-finals.

Many of the women may be going back next week.