The qualification tournament, the Asia Rugby Olympic Qualifiers, will be held in Hong Kong from November 7 to 8. Asia’s women’s sevens teams will play in a two-leg qualification series starting in Hong Kong and finishing in Tokyo later in November.

“There wasn’t much between the two teams in the final or on the series,” Baber said. “We have now played Japan twice, with two tries being the difference across those matches. We made a few individual errors and didn’t quite deal with some of the pressurised situations as well as they did.

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“It is a tight competition with Japan, South Korea, Sri Lanka and China all pushing for positions but we are satisfied with what we have achieved in the series.

“We will have one more tournament to build up at the Central Coast Sevens in Australia [October 24-25] and then come back for two weeks of preparation for the Olympic qualifiers.”

Baber will use that opportunity to integrate some experienced campaigners coming off injury, including Tom McQueen, Mark Wright, Tsang Hing-hung and Kwok Ka-chun.

The coach was heartened by the return of playmaker Keith Robertson, who showed that despite his injury woes he still has the X-factor to break down the interior defensive line.

“It was nice to see him back in action, although I haven’t seen that much of him in a match setting because of his injuries,” Baber said.

“People know what Keith can add. He has an ability on a sevens pitch that other players don’t and he had a lot of time on the ball this weekend and created space well, even nipping a few tries for us when we needed them. Emotionally, he is very calm and he knows how to play in those pressure situations.”

The Hong Kong women’s team were also thwarted by Japan, this time in the Cup semi-finals, but finished third in the tournament after beating an improved Thailand 21-15.

The result in Colombo – combined with the women’s first-ever tournament title to open the series in China – gave Hong Kong their highest spot in the Asia Rugby Women’s Sevens Series, level on 14 points with champions Japan and runners-up China but finishing in third place because of an inferior series points spread..

“We are extremely proud of how the women’s team have done. They have battled for a few years and have finally come through, winning their first tournament this season,” Baber said.

“In Colombo, they battled again and while some of the results didn’t go our way, they are in a good position now for the [Olympic] qualifiers.”