The Hong Kong Women’s Sevens squad beat Thailand 24-5 to win the Cup at the Borneo Sevens 2018, while Hong Kong’s Men’s Seven edged Sri Lanka, 20-17, to claim Bronze.

Women’s coach Kevin West had called for quick defensive line speed and a physical approach ahead of today’s matches and he got it as Hong Kong manhandled Singapore in a 38-0 win in the semi-final.

“We were definitely challenged in both games today and they were very different challenges,” said West.

“We had to be quite aggressive defensively in the semi final and then to defend slightly differently in the final and I’m delighted that the girls were able to adapt to the challenges we had.”

Hong Kong left no doubt of the outcome against Singapore after streaking out to a 24-0 first half lead behind tries from Melody Li Nim-yan, Natasha Olson-Thorne, and a first half brace from Colleen Tjosvold. Tjosvold completed her hat trick to start the second half before scrumhalf Sham Wai-sum added Hong Kong’s sixth try in the closing minute to push the final to 38-0.

That result set up the championship tie with Thailand, a bogey team for Hong Kong in the recent past.

“It was great to beat Thailand in the final. We lost to them in the Asian series so to get that victory was important. We had to work hard against them, but it was a comprehensive result, so I’m very happy with that,” said West.

Hong Kong retained the majority of possession and territory throughout the final, but the Thailand defence held up to the challenge well.  

Chong Ka-yan proved the difference maker as she capped another excellent international outing with a first half brace of tries, both off of weaving attacks down the touchline. The first came in the opening minute and the second came shortly before half time to give Hong Kong some breathing room as they led 14-0 at the break after two conversions from Tjosvold.

Thailand closed the gap to 14-5 early in the second half, but Hong Kong forced key turnovers when needed and took good care of the ball in possession. The graft paid off late in the match when Olson-Thorne finished off a long build-up play to crash over the line to bring the score to 19-5.

Stephanie Chan collected Hong Kong’s last try with a good piece of effort as she stayed with the ball in a footrace against the Thai defence, chipping ahead metres at a time under duress before corralling it over the line to give Hong Kong the 24-5 win.

For West, the win will only boost Hong Kong’s confidence ahead of the upcoming World Rugby Women’s Sevens Series qualifier this April.

“This is great leading into Hong Kong and then obviously into the Asian Games later in the year. They reached a final in Fiji and have now had a final and a trophy here. The girls work hard and haven’t always had a lot of reward for that over the years, so I’m delighted for them,” he said.

West was most pleased with the results of a batch of new faces coming into the squad, all of whom had significant game-time this weekend.

“Absolutely selection [for the qualifier] is going to be a headache. A lot of the new girls like Poon Hoi-yan, Amber Tsang, Sin Yi Au Yeung, Stephanie Chan either started or came on in most games. They haven’t had a lot of opportunities to get that type of experience previously, so changing that dynamic is fantastic,” West added.

It was a day of tight battles for the men, who lost their semi-final match against ICONZ, 17-14, before bouncing back to edge Sri Lanka, 20-17, in the play-off for third place.

ICONZ, an invitational team with top quality talent from Australia and New Zealand, jumped out to an early lead after scoring a long try against the run of play in the opening minutes. Hong Kong responded well with Salom Yiu threatening the try-line shortly after.

After Yiu was felled by a dangerous tackle, ICONZ had one of their players sent to the sin-bin.  Seconds later, Yiu capitalized on the newfound space to score with Russ Webb’s conversion giving Hong Kong a 7-5 lead.

Jack Neville looked to have scored Hong Kong’s second try a moment later, but his tally was called back after the referee handed a yellow card to Mike Coverdale up field. With both sides evenly matched neither squad could break through for the rest of the half.  

ICONZ returned to full strength to start the second period, but Hong Kong upped its work rate in defence and managed to nullify their attack until returning to full strength.

The score remained 7-5 entering the final two minutes, when ICONZ demonstrated their deadly counter-attacking capabilities once again, assembling an end-to-end try to retake the lead, 10-7.

Yiu restored hope for Hong Kong after making a deep foray into ICONZ territory after the re-start. He did well to remain standing in contact and offloaded the ball to Ben Rimene who went on to score and convert his try to give Hong Kong a 14-10 lead.

Hong Kong were slightly overenthusiastic in chasing down their re-start and ICONZ took advantage to claim a third try as the hooter sounded, sending them into the cup final, 17-14.

Coach Paul John was prosaic about the semi-final, saying, “We didn't perform quite as well as we could. We didn’t take our chances when he had the ball, then we had the yellow card and managed to get back into it at the end, but it was just one of those topsy-turvy games you get in sevens.

“It was a good exercise for us and effectively if we had beaten them I think we would have won the final, but it was really good experience in any case,” said Paul, who was pleased with the way his side rebounded to take third.

Sri Lanka took a 5-0 lead in the opening minute, but tries from Seb Brien and Chris Maize gave Hong Kong a 10-5 advantage, before the Lankans responded with their second try to deadlock the match at 10-all at halftime.

Brien scored his second try shortly after the resumption of play after Cado Lee found him on a nice outlet pass for a 15-10 lead. Max Denmark then widened the lead to a safer 20-10 margin after wrong-footing the defence on the try line.  Sri Lanka added a consolation try at full-time to close the gap to 20-17 but Hong Kong had claimed third.

“It’s been a good effort this weekend from everyone,” said John.

“We managed to see all of the players and get them some game time, which was the best thing about this weekend.

“We used everyone in the bronze medal match because we wanted to get some of the players used to that big-game experience and to give them the opportunity to respond to those situations. I thought they responded very well to that, especially those guys that started,” John said.