Coach’s Corner | Mid-season internationals having significant impact
Hong Kong’s ‘surprise’ victory in opening Christmas test the result of years of hard work and development
Well! Where to start? What an outstanding performance by our Hong Kong boys on Tuesday night at King's Park.
We should not underestimate the significance of the result, along with the hard work put in by all the players and coaches. You have to realise that 70 per cent of the current Belgium national squad play their club rugby in the top three divisions of the French leagues and that they achieved great results in the European Championships earlier this year against the likes of Georgia and Russia.
At this point it is well worth taking stock of what has turned into the de facto “mid-season test series” or “overseas tour” for Hong Kong.
In 2009 the “Christmas Tour” was introduced to develop players for the annual Asian 5 Nations, as well as pushing the teams and coaches outside their comfort zones by having them square up to unfamiliar opponents from outside Asia.
This started with two tours to a snowbound Europe in 2009 and 2010. There were many critics of the tours at the time, largely due to the poor win returns – a single victory against Norway being the only positive from five international games against Germany (twice), the Czech Republic and Holland.
2011 and 2012 saw a change in locale to warmer climes with the introduction of the Emirates Airline Cup of Nations (Eacon) in Dubai.
The European tours and HSBC A5N have allowed us to build a larger and more experienced international squad. Eacon in particular gave us the opportunity to compete against new teams such as Brazil, Kenya and our current opponents in Hong Kong, Belgium.