With England leading Samoa 22-5 it looked like Hong Kong, who had earlier held Australia to 19 points in defeat and hammered Thailand 55-5, would snatch one of the two Cup spots for second-place teams and come face-to-face with mighty Fiji.

But Samoa, with Roger Warren sinbinned, made a late dash downfield and replacement Tapelu scored. Hong Kong now play defending champions Japan in the Plate quarter-finals.

'I would have rather played in the Cup than have a shot at winning the Plate, but it was not to be,' said Hong Kong coach Jim Rowark, who guided the SAR to last year's Bowl title.

'If the team can play as well [today] as on the first two days there is no reason they cannot go all the way.

'I think they have done well so far in the tournament - I am really pleased. We have done everything we talked about before the event. We defended well and took nearly every opportunity that came our way to score.

'We played well as a team - there are some great individuals but it's the team effort that has counted.

'Gordon Tietjens [the New Zealand coach] was up in Hong Kong helping us out and he advised us to play every game according to the opposition. We had a strategy for each match and that has taken us to the next level.' The Hong Kong dressing room was a casualty ward again yesterday. After losing Mark Solomon on day one with a bad knee injury, replacement Jason Going was hurt in the very first tackle after coming on against Thailand. Paul Dingley and Carl Murray are also carrying injuries.

After their win over Scotland, there was no inferiority complex about Hong Kong in their clash with Australia, underlined when Matt Reede scored a great try in the corner to give them a 5-0 lead.

But Hong Kong's cover defence failed on a couple of occasions to force the Australians in-field and their fliers took their chances way out wide. Ryan Constable, Peter Miller and Matthew Isaac scored to give the Australians a hard-fought 19-5 win.

'We made a couple of defensive errors - we came off their wide men and allowed them to use the wings, instead of pushing them inside. Even our quick sweeper, Matt Reede, could not stop them out wide,' said Rowark.

'The Australians have a very good defence and it was not easy to create openings. But we scored a good try and performed well.' Hong Kong knew that they had to pile on the points against Thailand to edge open the door to the Cup and they were well on target with 36 points in the first half through tries by Reede, Will Wild, Carl Murray, Alan Clark and two by the inspirational Rodney McIntosh.

The Thais put up more spirited resistance after the break but Hong Kong stuck to their task and Murray, Hamish Bowden and McIntosh put them within touching distance of their first appearance in the Cup competition since 1989 with the 55-5 win.

'We knew to have any chance of getting into the Cup we had to score a lot of points,' said Rowark.

'Reaching the Cup was always realistic after beating Scotland and we took about 90 per cent of our chances against Thailand.' John Crean