Boots and all | More is better in this ‘numbers game’
As Indonesia’s millions come into the rugby fold, Hong Kong’s player shortages continue to be exposed

Suddenly, there are potentially 250 million more rugby players in the world. Well, ever since Indonesia was accepted by the International Rugby Board as its 101st full member this week.
Of course you need a stretch of the imagination to believe that those magical millions will translate into actual numbers on the field. Just like you needed to suspend belief watching Kieran Read stretch out and off-load the ball – despite the attention of three English defenders – which led to the first try being scored by Julian Savea in the Twickenham Test last Saturday.
Massaging numbers is something every authoritative power does well and the IRB is no different. They would love it if every man, woman and child in the Indonesian archipelago would take up the game. But in reality there are only 310 adult players spread across the 17,500 islands, plus a similar number of youth players.
In Hong Kong, we have more numbers playing, but then we have been running around in the paddock for longer too. Yet, despite having more than 7,000 registered players in town and 74 clubs – around 4,700 are in mini-rugby which has 20 clubs – we still struggle when it comes to fielding squads at the highest level.
And this situation is made even worse if our 15s and sevens programmes clash as it did last season when commitments to the HSBC Asian Five Nations as well as the London Sevens had to be met at the same time.
This season the issue was condensed even further with the sevens squad having to spread its resources fielding two teams for the China National Games as well as the first leg of the Asian Sevens Series in Kuala Lumpur, which fell on the same weekend in September. Winning a gold medal in Shenyang was top priority so a number of our best players including Rowan Varty, Anthony Haynes, Salom Yiu Kam-shing, Kwok Ka-chun and Alex McQueen were separated from the squad bound for Kuala Lumpur.