Hong Kong’s youth team delivered some impressive rugby on the opening day of the Coral Coast Sevens in Sigatoka on Wednesday, winning all three of their matches.

After opening with a 31-7 victory over RA Barbarians, they knocked off Nailaga with the exact same scoreline before taking down Northern Spirit 26-14.

It was the way his team went about their business that impressed coach Stephen Dowse the most, with the youth team’s first appearance at the tournament offering a fantastic opportunity to test themselves against quality opposition.

“I think more pleasing than the result was the performance to be honest,” Dowse said.

“Before the tournament and before the game we talked about making our point of difference be our teamwork and our work off the ball and that’s something that we can hopefully exploit throughout the tournament.

“We may not be individually as quick or as physically big but for us it is very much about playing as a team and working hard for each other.

“It’s about testing ourselves against a high-quality opposition that are different to what we see in the Asian under 20s and those type of competitions.”

The Hong Kong team is made up of players from the podium programme – an initiative introduced by the Hong Kong Rugby Union to prepare young players for the transition to senior rugby.

It was Hong Kong’s superior fitness and well-drilled game plan that shone through and Dowse hopes the team can feed off the chance to play consistently against Fijian opposition.

“Guys have been working hard over the last year or two to put on a bit of size and it’s credit to the strength and conditioning staff back in Hong Kong for working with these guys towards that,” he said.

“We just need more of these games, we want to test the guys and we want them to see what the level is that they need to aspire to and see where they measure up. Hopefully it challenges them and also gives them confidence.”

Marcus Ramage and Fong Kit-fung where the stars on the scoreboard for Hong Kong on day one, with Ramage running in a hat-trick in the opening game and two in the second match.

Fong crossed twice in each of the opening two games and added one in the third, while the grunt work of Max Denmark and Liam Herbert impressed Dowse.

“Marcus is a good player, he’s been doing well with the men and with his club at Scottish as well,” Dowse said. “Certainly the likes of Max and Liam who have been training full-time with the sevens programme have really stepped up and Marcus to be honest had a bit of an easy time of it on the wing. It was really good, the team allowed him to get those individual scores.”

Hong Kong take on First Light Taveuni in the quarter-finals on Thursday morning after topping pool E.

“We didn’t really come here with much knowledge of what the standard would be, certainly within each pool there is a couple of standout teams so it’s great that we have put ourselves in the position to be playing against another calibre of team,” Dowse said.

“I’m really pleased with how the boys went today. It’s not about seven guys, it’s about 12 guys and we want to challenge ourselves to get better tomorrow and we want to have our point of difference again in our rehydration, our refuelling and what we do tonight to put ourselves in the best position for tomorrow.”

Hong Kong’s women kick off their tournament on Thursday, before the men get their campaign started on Friday.

PHOTO CREDIT : DAVID CLIFTON