Put your drink down for a second there and look away from the mirror if at all possible while sizing up your wardrobe options for this weekend's carnival. Have a gander at those precious tickets on the counter. Look at them good and hard. Now tell me where it says 'Asia's largest costume ball?' Nowhere, at least not officially.
This may amaze you but the Hong Kong Sevens is actually an athletic event and a fairly prestigious one at that. Granted, the myriad distractions in the stands often take away from the action on the pitch. Still, this is first and foremost a sporting event and never more so than now. Thanks in part to the high profile this annual event has created, sevens will officially become an Olympic medal sport in 2016. What a remarkable transition for this game that many rugby aficionados dismiss as an abomination of traditional 15-a-side rugby.
And yet the International Rugby Board (IRB) has recognised that if it hopes to grow the sport beyond its traditional base, Sevens is a perfect way to do it. The rules are not nearly so Byzantine and the electric pace of matches can be quite compelling. Add in the fact that participants can now compete in the Olympics and traditional sporting powers like China, Russia and the US, who have an insatiable lust for medals, can't help but embrace the game going forward.
It seems like it's all coming together for sevens rugby now and with the sport's higher profile comes the burden of expectations. Maybe you might be a little too celebratory and boozy by Sunday afternoon to remember or care about a pivotal play in one of the tournament's big matches, but millions watching on TV won't.
The last thing sevens needs to get saddled with at its point of ascension is incompetence in officiating. It's a fact that is not lost on one of the most influential and prominent people in rugby. 'We need video referees,' says Gordon Tietjens, coach of New Zealand's sevens team and arguably the premier mentor the sport has ever seen. 'We don't need two referees on the field of play, but we certainly need a video referee to give the players the right to challenge some calls in terms of what they do in tennis. It would be sad if winning a gold medal was decided on an error.'
There is no use of video replay in the game but that could change when the IRB announces a new set of sevens guidelines shortly. One of the more common arguments against replay technology is that sevens is built on pace and stopping games for reviews will slow it down. While it is true that you cannot hide a slow player on a sevens pitch they don't move as fast as ice hockey players and the NHL avails of video replay.