Forty years ago, a group of British expatriates who had founded an exiles rugby club in Dubai were faced with something of a setback when they arrived for a match only to find that a line of telegraph poles had been installed overnight across their pitch.

A year later, the same club put on a sevens tournament, which was won by the Staffordshire Regiment. The military, social and student sides who have been coming to Dubai for the past four decades will this weekend again form a backdrop to an international tournament that will take place in a brand new stadium in front of 50,000 spectators. England, who last won the Emirates Dubai Sevens in 2005, will be hoping that their opponents are not as immovable as those telegraph poles.

Four time zones to the east of London, and at about the same time that Steve Borthwick's side will be confronting the haka at Twickenham, New Zealand are a possible semi-final opponent for England in the first tournament of this year's IRB Sevens World Series. That is if England beat Fiji, the only team other than New Zealand to have won the World Series in its nine-year history, in their pool D match tomorrow.

It is a tough ask, not least because Waisale Serevi, Fiji's talismanic former fly half who coached them to the title three years ago, has returned to the helm. But Ben Ryan, the England coach, believes that his squad has the potential to throw up some surprises, both in the first two rubbers of the World Series - the jamboree moves on to South Africa next week - and in the Sevens World Cup, also to be held in Dubai, in March.

“No one will be shaking in their boots when they see us, but I know some things about my team that the other coaches don't,” Ryan said. “I'm looking forward to us throwing ourselves out there and seeing where we land.”

After a disappointing last season, when England lost to the Cook Islands and to Kenya three times, Ryan and Rob Andrew, the RFU's director of elite rugby, realised that England would struggle to compete with the leading sevens nations unless they sought outside help. This month, a contract was signed with British Cycling to work alongside some of the fitness coaches who helped Great Britain to win eight Olympic gold medals in Beijing last summer.

“They've been giving us advice and we have set the protocols in place,” Ryan said. “Two of our players have been doing training in the middle of the velodrome in Manchester with Mark Simpson [British Cycling's strength and conditioning coach]. It won't have had much of an impact yet, but as soon as we get back after South Africa, we will go into one-on-one work with them until the World Cup.”

And it is not just cycling expertise that is being sought. Half of the squad have been working on sprint training with Linford Christie, while others have been working on lunges with Britain's badminton coaches. A polar explorer was brought in to give a motivational talk on self-belief.

“We feel that we're better prepared than we have been for the last two seasons,” Ryan said. Recently, his squad did a series of fitness tests with the full England squad and trounced them. Toby Flood was the fastest of the 15-man code, completing the circuit of shuttle runs in 3min 33sec, but Ryan's men averaged 3min 20sec.

In Uche Oduoza and Tom Biggs, England have a pair of young backs with express pace. Biggs, the 24-year-old Leeds Carnegie wing, scored the winning try against New Zealand in the Twickenham Sevens last year and Oduoza, 22, who was at Worcester Warriors, has been honing his powerful game in Japan with the Suntory club alongside George Gregan, the former Australia captain, where he has been developing his kicking and defensive skills so that he can play at full back as well as wing.

“Uche is a bit of a hidden gem,” Ryan said. “Nobody really knows too much about him, but physically he is unbelievable and is a very bright footballer. He is one of several who can go on to much higher honours.”

If Oduoza does make it into the full England side, he would be following in the scorch marks of some notable graduates of the England sevens side, such as Ugo Monye, Jamie Noon, James Haskell and Mathew Tait. If things go badly at Twickenham on Saturday, that call-up could come sooner than he might have planned.

The IRB, under fire from leading unions for the heavy premium it has asked of countries bidding to host the World Cups of 2015 and 2019, has climbed down from its initial position. The slump in the world economy has provoked a reduction in the tournament fee for 2015 from £100 million to £80 million and for 2019 from £120 million to £96 million, while a profit-share formula has been added for the successful bidder.