For rugby fans, the World Cup is a must-see event. Many of them are happy to travel thousands of kilometres to the host nation to watch games.
Some Hong Kong fans of the sport are no different. This year 10 girls, aged 13 to 16, from French International School (FIS), travelled to New Zealand for the Rugby World Cup last month.
The school has a strong rugby team and the 13-day trip to Wellington was led by coach Rodney Mcintosh and PE teacher Philippe Guillo. It had been organised by the Agency for French Education Abroad, which recruited rugby players from FIS and four other French international schools for a youth tournament during the World Cup.
'The other four teams were boys' teams,' says Viviane Viz, 16, a Lower Six student and captain of the team.
The FIS girls play tackle rugby in Hong Kong. In Wellington, they had to play touch rugby, a less contact-heavy form of the sport in which players don't tackle but simply touch opponents. 'We were going to play against girls' teams from local schools,' Viviane adds. 'So we had to learn and practise touch rugby for the competition.'
Emily Spencer, 15, a Form Five student, concedes that playing touch rugby posed some challenges. 'We had a brief friendly with a Sydney boys' team to warm up,' she says. 'We also had two morning training sessions of touch rugby before the competition.'
Even though they were new to touch rugby, the Hong Kong girls beat two out of the four teams they played against. They finished fourth in the competition. 'We did quite well,' Emily says.