Hong Kong suffer crushing blow for second year running
World Series dream out of reach against lofty professionals in London
The streets of London were not paved with gold for Hong Kong yesterday when Spain crushed their hopes with a 29-14 victory in the quarter-finals of the core-team qualifying tournament at the London Sevens.
The ghosts of sevens past returned to haunt Hong Kong again as they bowed out early for the second successive year, failing in their bid to grab a core-team berth in the HSBC Sevens World Series. Last year, a six-man Hong Kong were beaten by Japan at this stage.
Spain, using their superior height to the maximum advantage, played smart rugby to deny Hong Kong possession to run to a 19-0 lead at half-time. Skipper Rowan Varty scored the first try after the break to raise hopes of a fightback but Spain quickly dispelled such thoughts by running in a couple of more tries to stretch their lead. Ben Rimene's consolation score at the end was anything but that.
"It is extremely disappointing to fall short again. We couldn't get our hands on the ball in the first half," said Varty.
"We needed a bit of luck to go our way and it didn't happen. I suppose if we had one year on the circuit, we could dictate our own luck."
Varty was perhaps alluding to the International Rugby Board's strange promotion-relegation format, where the three bottom-placed teams in this year's World Series - Scotland, Portugal and Spain - were given the chance to re-qualify right away instead of missing out a year (as true relegation means) and allowing three new teams to gain promotion.
A record one-day sevens crowd of 71,898 fans had turned up on the first day but when Hong Kong ran out early yesterday morning barely a few hundred were inside Twickenham - and it almost seemed as if Hong Kong had failed to turn up, too.