Among the bleary-eyed stragglers winding their way through Chek Lap Kok today following a hedonistic weekend at the Hong Kong Sevens, will be a diminutive Samoan teenager whose eyes have been opened and whose life has been changed by the sevens experience.
Nineteen-year-old Desmond Fa'aiuaso arrived in the SAR better known as a soccer star - a striker for both the Olympic and national teams. He leaves with the rest of the Samoan sevens squad bound for this weekend's Singapore tournament determined to dedicate his playing days to rugby.
'This was my first time in a tournament, with thousands of eyes. But I wasn't scared of that. I felt confident and I felt strong. The first time I walked out in the Hong Kong Stadium was when I made the decision to stick with rugby,' he revealed. 'I hope I'll be coming back here every year. That's what I'll be trying to do. From now on I only want to play rugby.'
Fa'aiuaso fervour for the oval-ball game was fuelled further by a resoundingly successful tournament. He took to the switch from striker to scrumhalf with aplomb, leaving Hong Kong as Samoa's top try scorer, crossing the line three times against Chinese Taipei, once against Namibia and, most memorably bamboozling the New Zealand defence with his agility to score direct from a tap penalty in the quarter-finals.
'I'm very happy to have scored against New Zealand. I feel good in my heart,' he said. 'They'll be very proud back home.' The folks back home are the reason that Fa'aiuaso found himself representing Samoa. 'We have a tournament in Samoa, the Marist Sevens, and I was asked to play for my village, Lepoa. My uncle and the rest of the family told me I should play,' the teenager explained.
'We have an arc-shaped house just by the road on the edge of the village. There are maybe 500 in our village and they're lovely people, mostly farmers. We qualified for the Bowl final and from that they selected me for the national under-21 team's 15-a-side trials and then the trials for this team.