It’s a curious fact here: Local sports news dries up markedly once we hit April. The European golf tour has come and gone, twice. The men and women of world tennis have been through the UAE with back-to-back events in Dubai. A batch of Premier League clubs dropped by for a little bit of sun during January. The big marathon in Dubai was run in March. We had the Club World Cup in December and the Asian Cup in Qatar, an hour away, in January.

The weather is, of course, turning, and local news of the major-league sort dries up for about seven months.

Which was why I found myself on the road to the little town of Madinat Zayed last night. The two worst clubs in the Pro League were playing deep in the desert, less than an hour’s drive from the edge of the Empty Quarter, one of the world’s most arid deserts.

I figured we had a chance at a decent story out of the struggle to avoid relegation. And the scene, too — at the UAE’s answer to Barstow.

I am not quite sure why Madinat Zayed exists, a city of 30,000 people about 30 miles from the coast. It isn’t an oasis, with natural sweet water (like Al Ain), as far as I know. It isn’t a crossroads … no mining goes on, no oil drilling. No railroad, like Barstow has.

But there it sits, with sand on all sides, far away from the Gulf, which seems to lure most cities to its shores like a watery magnet. I suppose the city is there as an administrative center for the Western Region, the largely empty stretch between Abu Dhabi and the borders with Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

Madinat Zayed, it turns out, is the titular home of one of the Pro League’s lesser sides, Al Dhafra. I say “titular” because the home team’s players actually live and practice in Abu Dhabi, 95 miles away. They take Highway 11 about halfway across the emirate of Abu Dhabi, then dive into the interior to Hamdan bin Zayed Stadium only on game days.

Al Dhafra is not very good and never has been, but it has skirted relegation for three consecutive years. This year, however, may be different. The club has had an issue filling its No. 3 foreigner slot, and playing with only two foreigners is an enormous handicap in this league.

Their opponents were Kalba, a little team from a port city on the Indian Ocean (east) side of the country, just north of Oman. Kalba is 65 miles east of Dubai, which is about 70 miles north of Abu Dhabi, which means Kalba and Al Dhafra are about 210 miles apart, which is a monstrous commute in this country.

Kalba is a promoted side, and was the worst team in the league for eight weeks, winning exactly one point during that time. Though it was a good one point, coming in a home game against Al Ahli, the Dubai team that began the season with high hopes, after adding Fabio Cannavaro and a Brazilian midfielder named Pinga and a Premier League coaching staff led by David O’Leary. Kalba tied them 2-2 back in September, but that was all they did for months.

Then they hired as coach a skinny little Brazilian named Jorvan Vieira, 57, who made history in 2007 by leading Iraq to the Asian Cup championship in a huge upset. Kalba hired him, hoping he could work another miracle, and he’s making some progress after an initial period of skepticism when, he said, his motives were questioned, which I wrote about here.

Kalba’s French forward, Gregory Dufrennes, scored two goals and Kalba won 2-1, escaping the cellar for the first time this season. They’re now tied for 10th with Al Ain and are one point behind Dubai, so they have a real chance of staying up, now. I wrote about that here, in The National.

The trip to the match reminded me, more than a little, of the drive to Barstow on I-15 from the Las Vegas side. Nothing but desert and cars and trucks hurrying across it. A ribbon of road with almost nothing around. The main difference: No mountains in the drive here. But the same feeling of “what is this town doing here?” that you get, with Barstow, followed soon after by the same, “and people actually live here year-round?”

I believe a big reason why they have a soccer team in Madinat Zayed is to give the locals some entertainment. We had a decent crowd, considering. Maybe 2,000, which is a lot of people for a town of 30,000.

The wind blew all night, again reminding me of Barstow, and it impacted play. The team trying to go north fought the wind like a swimmer breasting waves coming to the shore.

The event was made a bit easier by having an Abu Dhabi Media driver take me in a company car. His name is Mansour, and he comes from Kerela State in India, and is 27 and intends to marry but has not, yet. He has been here five years, and I didn’t at all mind that someone else would be staring down the road while I napped.

Had we kept going another 30 miles into the desert, we would have been at the oasis town of Liwa, which marks the edge of the Empty Quarter. Think Death Valley, except way, way bigger.

Another Pro League stadium, checked off my list. And I’ve now seen all 12 teams play, in person, except for Dubai. Working on that one.