The Hong Kong women’s rugby sevens team came in third at the first leg of the Asia Rugby Sevens Qualifier this weekend, beating China 12-7 in the plate final. Both tries were scored by Aggie Poon, who came out as the tournament’s top try scorer with eight in her pocket.
Japan came in first in the tournament, beating Kazakhstan 22-0 in the cup final. The qualifier was played at Hong Kong Stadium, which saw more than 10,000 fans yesterday.
On the second day of the qualifier, Hong Kong lost to Kazakhstan 12-20 then won 29-0 against Guam. On Saturday, the team kicked off the tournament with a 36-5 win over Sri Lanka. They then bagged a narrow 5-0 win over China but succumbed 0-36 to Japan.
“I think we did some good stuff out there,” Christy Cheng, the 29-year-old captain of the team, told Coconuts HK, adding that the team “showed a lot of heart” in their defence in both their games against China.
Aggie Poon (centre)
With the second and final leg of the qualifier coming up in Tokyo at the end of the month, both Cheng and their coach Anna Richards believe that consistency is the key area the team needs to work on.
“We beat China and then China beat Japan,” said Richards, who is the most capped member of the New Zealand women’s rugby team. “It’s all about consistency I think and if you don’t do that over two days it is a hard tournament to win.”
Despite the third-place finish, Hong Kong still stands a chance at making it to the 2016 Olympics. In order to get to Rio de Janeiro, the women will need to win the second leg in addition to having the rest of the tournament’s results go in their favour.
“Our team is determined to go for the top spot in the second leg,” said Cheng. “To achieve that we are just going to focus on one game at a time and hope to build our momentum from the first pool game.”
Natasha Olson-Thorne (centre)
The men lost to Japan 24-10 in the final on Sunday. To make it to the Olympics, they’ll have to compete in a repechage, which will see 16 other runner-up teams from various regional qualifiers vying for the final spot.
Let’s go, Hong Kong!
Photos: Phoebe Leung
