In the good old days, a Hong Kong Football Club rugby tour meant you packed one overnight bag, made sure your toothbrush was in it, kissed your wife or girlfriend goodbye and set off with your mates for an exotic destination in Asia for games and fun. 'But today a Hong Kong Football Club tour could mean 300 kids and parents setting off for a weekend of adventure as was the case last weekend, when our mini-rugby section went to Kuala Lumpur. It shows how far we have come,' reminisces Dermot Agnew, president of the venerable Sports Road institution.
As the club observes its 125th anniversary this year, with promises of mega celebrations during the GFI HKFC Tens next month, it is perhaps appropriate to sit back and just think: What if Sports Road had never been?
What might have been the case if on February 12, 1886, Stewart Lockhart, the acting colonial secretary, hadn't gone out that wintry Friday evening to 'join seventeen kindred spirits in the Victoria Recreation Club gymnasium for a meeting of football minds', as Denis Way describes it in the book Along the Sports Road, published to mark the 125-year milestone.
Lockhart, an able sinologist, had an abrasive nature and was described as 'short, aggressive, competent and Scottish'. He was a doer who put in place the idea - for initially Hong Kong Football Club was just that as it didn't have a clubhouse, instead using a facility near the Jockey Club grandstand.
The first game, four days after that fateful meeting, was between the All Comers and the Garrison, and Lockhart was the 'quarterback' for the All Comers, who won by two tries and a goal to nil. Press reports suggested that the game was the 'best football match of the season' although players from both sides tended to disagree with the referee.
Some things don't change over the years. But from those beginnings was born a club which has been at the centre of the universe, so to speak, and been responsible for two of the biggest and most popular sporting events at this time of the year - the Cathay Pacific/Credit Suisse Hong Kong Sevens and the GFI Hong Kong Football Club Tens.
Agnew is not surprised at Hong Kong Football Club's involvement. An Irishman who has made Hong Kong his home since arriving in 1972, Agnew says it was inevitable that the Sevens was first played at Sports Road.
