Hong Kong’s Men’s and Women’s Sevens squads finished in third and fourth place respectively at the Asia Rugby Sevens Series in South Korea.

Both sides advanced to the semi-finals with the men beating Sri Lanka 31-21 in the quarterfinal to set up a rematch against Japan, who beat Hong Kong at the death in the final of the opening round last month.

The women edged Thailand 19-15 to also set up a semis clash with Japan.Trailing 14-0 at halftime in that match, Hong Kong had a glimpse of a comeback when captain Chiharu Nakamura was sin-binned in the first minute of the second half, but eventually allowedJapan to tack on two tries in a 28-0 win.

“Parts of our game against Japan were quite positive,” said women’s coach Anna Richards. “We talked about it before the game that we needed to go forward on attack and defence. But we made a few crucial errors and giving up two tries when Japan were down to six was a killer,” said Richards.

The loss sent Hong Kong into the third/fourth play-off against Kazakhstan. Returning to the series this year for the first time since 2015, Kazakhstan nearly upended China before losing in the semi-final, 17-14.

The third place play-off was a hotly contested affair in the first half with Kazakhstan scoring in the first minute and again deep into injury time to take a 12-0 lead into the break.

Kazakhstan struck again shortly after the resumption of play to push the lead to 17-0 before Hong Kong replied with a try from Nam Ka-man. Lee Tsz-ting’s conversion closed the gap to 17-7 and gave Hong Kong some hope of coming back, but the Kazakhs shut the door quickly with another try coming off the restart pushing the final score to 24-7.

With a majority of the sevens squad only recently available to train due to participation in the Women’s Rugby World Cup, Richards was reasonably satisfied with the outcome from their firstsevens outing of the season.

“It was always going to be a tough tournament, especially coming in on a limited build-up. We haven’t done any sevens training for four or five months and the other teams have really improved since last season. Kazakhstan is always good. They are very abrasive and have a lot of size.

“Coming in without much time together we targeted a finish in the top four, but we would have liked to end up a bit higher,” Richards added.

The men also fell at the semi-final stages in an oddly similar encounter againstJapan,losing 19-7 to end up in the third place play-off against China, whom they beat 22-17.

“We played reasonably well in the quarter finals. The boys reallyapplied themselves well and stuck to task to beat Sri Lanka. Again we went very close but not quite against Japan in the semis. We turned the ball over too much and gave up some easy tries really,” said coach Paul John.

Japan controlled much of the first half, posting two tries to take a 12-0 lead into the break. Hong Kong’s only reply came through Seb Brien, who mustered another big try early in the second half in an attempt to galvanize the troops. Brien converted his own effort to close the gap to 12-7.

A yellow card to winger Naoki Motomura seemed to open the door for Hong Kong but it was Siosifa Lisala who once again shut it with a try a minute later. The conversion brought the final score to 19-7 and sent Hong Kong into the play-offs.

With five new faces playing in the squad this season, the experience factor may be coming into play for Hong Kong but Paul is encouraged by the progress he has seen to date.

“These guys are learning all of the time. They learned from their first tournament and will still be learning from their 50th I’m sure. Managing ourselves between games, between days and between tournaments is a big thing and we need to get that right over the next three weeks.”

Hong Kong will take another tilt at defending its title next month in Sri Lanka. Hong Kong is third in the standings with 18 points. Japan is atop the table (22) while Korea leap-frogged Hong Kong into second on 20 points.The top two finishers will qualify for the Rugby World Cup Sevens next year.

“We have got to go back and prepare our strongest possible squad for what will be a very important weekend in Colombo. It’s going to be a shoot-out. We will have Japan in our pool, so we have to focus on the early games and then a big last game. It’s just close now, very, very, close,” John said.