HSBC World Rugby Sevens Challenger Series: Hong Kong’s men through to semi-finals, while women bounce back
- Men’s team recover from losing first game of the day to Chile to easily brush aside Brazil in the quarter-finals
- The women hammer Papua New Guinea in their pursuit of high-place finish having just missed out on last 8
Hong Kong’s men and women had mixed fortunes on the second day of the opening tournament of the HSBC World Rugby Sevens Challenger Series in South Africa.
While the men lost their first game of the tournament, the women bounced back to record wins over Paraguay and Papua New Guinea at Markotter Stadium in Stellenbosch.
Although a 17-12 victory over the South Americans gave the women’s team something to cheer, it was not enough to get them through to the quarter-finals, as they finished third in Pool D.
Facing the prospect of only coming as high as ninth, Paul John’s side handed PNG a hammering in their second game of the day, with Natasha Olson-Thorne running in a hat-trick in a 44-7 triumph.
Gabriella Rivers and Rosie Wright both scored two tries apiece, and Nam Ka-man also crossed, while Fatima Rama grabbed PNG’s only try, which Sharon Kobor converted.
Hong Kong’s reward is a game against Mexico on Saturday afternoon, Hong Kong time.
The men, meanwhile, began their day with a disappointing 14-7 loss to Chile in Pool B, and finished it with a thumping 35-7 win over Brazil in the quarter-finals.
It was exactly the performance head coach Jevon Groves had called for after the defeat earlier in the day.
“We wanted to address our defensive issues from day one and while we improved our intent in the tackle today, we didn’t value our possession enough, and made too many errors with the ball in hand,” he said after the Chile defeat.
“There was an improvement on our defence from yesterday, but we need to marry these elements, offence and defence, and look after the ball better.
“We have to focus on ourselves now; focus on what we do well and just turn in a complete performance on offence and defence. We know we can do it. If we get that complete performance we can do very well. We are not far off at the moment but we only have a few opportunities left to put it out there on the pitch.”
The only blot on Hong Kong’s copy book was allowing Brazil to score first through Robson Morais. Lorenzo Massari’s successful conversion was the last moment of cheer for the Brazilians.
Russel Webb got things levelled up by scoring and then converting his own try, and he was perfect with the boot thereafter, adding the extras as Hugo Stiles, Liam Herbert, Alessandro Nardoni and Pierce MacKinlay-West all crossed.
Groves’ side face Tonga or Italy in the semi-finals on Saturday.
