HONG KONG WOMEN’S U20 IN CUP CONTENTION IN ASIA RUGBY U20S SEVENS SERIES IN MALAYSIA

30th Jul 2016

The Hong Kong Rugby Union’s Women’s U20s sevens team is positioned for a Cup run following the opening day’s action of the Asia Rugby U20s Sevens Series in Johor Bahru, Malaysia. The Men’s U20 failed to advance to the Cup competition after two losses on the opening day ended their hopes of a third-straight championship in Johor Bahru.

The Women opened their campaign strong with 38-0 and 27-0 victories over Singapore and Malaysia in the four-team competition that also features Thailand. But Hong Kong dropped their final encounter of the day to Thailand, 24-12 to finish the round-robin stage in second place.

Hong Kong’s results set up a Cup semi final against Malaysia tomorrow at 10.50am. A second win over Malaysia in as many days would put Hong Kong through to the Cup final where they will most likely meet Thailand again.

Despite the blip on day one, HKRU Women’s U20s Sevens coach Sam Feausi is confident.

“We had two really good wins today and only lost to a strong Thailand team after having one of the girls sent to the sin-bin in the second half. After we went a player down, we fell off our defence a bit and paid for it.

“This Thailand team is technically very good and also very nippy, but we came away from the match knowing that they are beatable and that if we stick to our structures and keep up our defensive standard for 14 minutes we can beat them,” Feausi said.

Rosanna Wright and captain ‘BB’ Lee Tsz-ting were influential today with Wright collecting 17 points from three tries and a conversion while Lee added 13 points from a try and four conversions.

The Men’s two-year run as champions in Malaysia ended today when Hong Kong failed to advance to the Cup competition from the opening rounds of pool play.

Fielding a team with relatively little specialist sevens experience, the U20s dropped a challenging season opening match to South Korea 10-19 before rebounding with a 31-10 win over Singapore in their opening matches.

Those early results set up a climactic final match of day one against hosts Malaysia, who had beat Korea 26-12 in their opener, before advancing past Chinese Taipei 19-14.

Malaysia delighted the local crowd with a convincing 26-17 win over Hong Kong to lock up one of the top two pool spots alongside South Korea.

South Korea ended day one atop the pool after finishing 3-1, with a game in hand over Malaysia, who will play Singapore in their final pool match tomorrow morning. Hong Kong will face off against Chinese Taipei tomorrow at 9.22am but a win will leave them still trailing Korea or Malaysia in the standings likely sending Hong Kong through to the Plate semi finals.

Men’s U20 coach Fan Shun Kei was disappointed with his young charges after day one saying, “Basically we just couldn’t execute anything and we conceded too much possession with too many unforced individual errors. We should have beaten Korea but we just couldn’t execute. Even in the win over Singapore we started poorly, before bouncing back in the second half. Against Malaysia we just gave up too much possession off of our own mental errors.”

In the climactic match against Malaysia Hong Kong spotted their opponents a 26-point lead in the first half before closing the gap to 26-17 in the second.

“We played much better in the second half but by then we had conceded too much of a gap,” said Fan. “New we need to play for pride. We need to pick ourselves up and go out and beat Chinese Taipei and ensure we advance to the Plate at least and ideally bring back some silverware to position ourselves for the final round in Hong Kong,” concluded Fan.

Japan, who haven’t participated on the Series for the past two seasons, romped through day one, dispatching the Philippines 40-0 and UAE 38-0 before setting up a showdown with Sri Lanka in the final match of the day. Japan won 19-14 to claim top honours in Pool B with nine points ahead of the Sri Lankans on seven; both teams have final pool matches tomorrow to set up the silverware match-ups.

Malaysia is the first of two legs of the 2016 Asia Rugby U20s Sevens Series with Hong Kong hosting the finale for the region’s top age-grade sevens talent from 12-13 August.

The Hong Kong Men’s U20 are the defending Asia Rugby U20s Sevens championship while the Women’s U20 finished second behind Japan in last year’s Series.

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