“I like how the teams play together and the fans’ passion to support their teams,” he said.

Magar and Gurung, who are of Nepalese descent, could be counted as two of the lucky ones given their academic prowess. Manoj Dhar, the co-founder and chief executive officer of Integration Brilliant Education, a charity providing after-school care and academic support for non-Chinese speaking children, offers support to children like Magar and Gurung inside what he calls a “discriminatory” local school system.

Dhar laid out a commonly heard scenario many families like Magar and Gurung’s have to deal with – children of poor families, where parents work long hours in low-paying jobs six or seven days a week. Magar and Gurung are “bona fide Hong Kong residents and not refugees or migrants”, but they are most definitely treated like second-class citizens, said Dhar.

“The challenge with them, and many kids like them, is that when they are four, they go into a local mainstream kindergarten and invariably the kindergarten schools turn them away: ‘Oh, you are not Chinese, you are not going to be able to be with us’.”

Dhar said this is part of a much larger systemic problem within Hong Kong’s culture, which on the outside, appears to be welcoming to all walks of life, but in reality is not.

“So to say that (local schools) are inclusive, to be very blunt, they are not. They are very exclusive, very biased and very racist.”

Dhar’s work with IBE, which is a registered charity with the Hong Kong government, has found itself a powerful ally over the past few years. The Hong Kong Rugby Union, the city’s most well-known sporting body, has been helping IBE through various programmes, including regular rugby training sessions, a summer programme and an annual sports day, which will have its fifth edition at King’s Park on Saturday.

HKRU chief executive Robbie McRobbie said both organisation’s ideals line up, so working together is seamless.

“The ethnic minority community here face a number of challenges, and he and his team are making a real difference in giving them a ‘leg up’,” said McRobbie. “Our own community foundation, who are running the sports day for the kids, employs four boys and girls from minority backgrounds every year on an apprentice programme, and we will continue to look at ways to help those members of society who need a hand – inclusivity is a value at the very heart of rugby.”

Dhar normally has around 200 children enrolled over two centres, one in Jordan and one in Sham Shui Po, and said it is vital non-Chinese children get the proper educational treatment needed from a young age.

“Because when the kid doesn’t get that foundation of being at par with the Chinese kid, when you are wanting to get into a good primary school, and the teachers are asking, ‘Can you write Chinese? Can you speak Chinese?’ And if they can’t, there in itself, their proficiency levels have dropped, and obviously you are not going to get into a good primary school and it just carries on into secondary school.”

Last year Magar and Gurung went on a number of trips via the IBE, including to the 2019 Cathay Pacific/HSBC Hong Kong Sevens, something most of their classmates were not able to attend. Gurung said heading to the city’s most iconic event was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

“In my friend group, I was the only one who comes to (IBE) and then I was the only one who went to (the Sevens), so my friends were like, ‘Whoa, you went there?’”