There will be an added reason to raise a glass of bubbly this January 1st, as one of the feature tournaments of the Hong Kong rugby calendar passes a very significant milestone - 50 glorious years of the New Year's Day Youth Tournament!

The event has existed in various forms since 1967, when the late Vernon Roberts was instrumental in arranging the first Hong Kong v Overseas Schoolboys event as an adjunct to the traditional New Year’s Day Army v Civvie “Old & Bold” match at the Hong Kong Football Club.

The event has grown steadily over the past five decades, adding ever more age grades, girls' fixtures, and then last year a game featuring the best youngsters from the Union's Junior Warriors programme.

Thankfully many of the names and traditions connected with the event have been carefully retained by the succession of hand-picked Tournament Directors, and history is well represented by the names on the trophies still presented to this day - the Roberts Shield, Waterford Bowl, George White Trophy, and of course the Middlesex Cup which dates right back from the earliest years. In recent years the contributions of more currently prominent members of our rugby community have also been recognised with names on silverware, such as the Stuart Leckie Cup, the Wright-Naylor Trophy, Gordon Lamb's Lassies' Quaich, and the Overton Cup, and of course the prestigious Best & Fairest Award each year is named after the much missed Larry Able, another who did so much to grow the youth game in Hong Kong.

To mark this important anniversary the Union have unveiled a special 50th logo, which will feature heavily on the day. Other plans are in progress, and as they prepare the Union would like to hear from any families who have had multiple participants and even multiple generations run out at HKFC on 1st January - there have certainly been fathers and sons or daughters who have both played, but it's just possible there could be a grandfather-father-son/daughter story out there somewhere!

"We are very excited about the anniversary," said Brandon Huang the Union's Head of Community & Development, "and we hope to see a bigger turn out than ever to help with the celebrations. We are delighted to have Prudential back on board as our sponsors, and Hong Kong Football Club will be our generous hosts once again - it's going to be a fantastic start to 2017!"

If you have any NYD Tournament stories to share, please contact [email protected] and for overseas players interested in trying out drop a line to [email protected]