Fantastic, just fantastic! That was the ecstatic reaction from Andy Hall, Leighton Asia HKCC’s director of rugby, after his side won the Paul Y Premiership league title on Saturday, ending a season-long seesaw battle with WhichWay Valley. While Valley stumbled at the last hurdle, HKCC beat Newedge Club 36-0 at Sports Road, scoring five tries and securing a much sought-after bonus point that pushed their overall competition points tally to 59. We’ll have a great night tonight, probably Sunday, and maybe we’ll have a couple more on Monday, as well HKCC’s Andy Hall Valley, who had started the day level with HKCC on 54 points, failed to fire in the same way and struggled to a last-gasp 22-18 win over Abacus Kowloon at King’s Park. The failure to score four tries or more to earn the bonus point left Valley one point back with their title dreams in tatters. It was HKCC’s first top-flight league title since 2007 and Hall said the champagne celebrations would be long and hard, before their attention turns towards the Grand Championship and the real possibility of completing league and play-off double. “We’ll have a great night tonight, probably Sunday, and maybe we’ll have a couple more on Monday, as well. But come Tuesday, we need to park this, as awful as that sounds, until after the Grand Championships,” Hall said. “The double is a challenge, though, isn’t it? How do you now manage a squad when you have had a success like this? I’ve never experienced it before, even as a player. We have always said that winning the league was our aim and we have achieved it. This is fantastic.” HKCC had the title in the bag by half-time, and with opponents Club unable to stem the onslaught the hungry cricketers ran in three tries through Pale Tauti, Tom McQueen and Wesley Wilkins, to take a 22-0 lead. Flanker Wilkins completed his brace after the break and, with Brad Raper touching down shortly afterwards, the celebrations were not far behind. “I knew if we played to our potential we would get the bonus point,” Hall said, adding that he had been keeping tabs on developments across the harbour and knew that Valley were being given a torrid time by Kowloon. Valley knew they not only had to score four tries or more, but if they were going to pull it off they also had to make up a 12-point gap in the for-and-against column of the league standings. They failed miserably. Kowloon, despite missing several key players, rose to the occasion in grand fashion and even led 18-17 with five minutes to go, thanks to a brace from fly-half Chris McAdam. But Hong Kong winger Salom Yiu Kam-shing touched down in the final minute to save Valley’s blushes and, together with earlier tries from Adam Campbell and Jean-Baptiste Aldigé, Valley nicked a narrow 22-18 win. “It is disappointing not to win the league,” said Valley coach Dean Herewini. “But I suppose it is nice to walk away with the win, with the boys digging deep, and take some positives going into the Grand Championship.” Valley will look back to their shock defeat by Hong Kong Scottish only two weeks ago, the moment they gave up ownership of the league’s top spot. “They [Scottish] were our bogey team – drawing against them earlier in the season and then losing to them,” Herewini said. Over at Shek Kip Mei on Saturday, Scottish crushed Borrelli Walsh Tigers 74-12 in a 10-try rout that saw them leapfrog Kowloon into fourth place and clinch the final berth for the Grand Championship play-offs.
