Malaysia, the hosts, are the first opposition for Hong Kong on Monday as the Asia Rugby Men’s U19 Championship gets under way. A 29-strong squad will be chasing Hong Kong’s seventh title in a row, as well as the place in next year’s World Rugby Under-20 Trophy that would come with it. New coach Logan Asplin, also director of rugby at Hong Kong Football Club, admitted there was an element of the unknown about the trip, with Hong Kong under-19s having not played since December 2019 – when they won their sixth title – and their opponents being even less of a known quantity. He has, however, a decade of youth coaching experience with New Zealand Harlequins, Super Rugby team the Chiefs and Waikato. Hong Kong rugby shelves ‘stubborn’ recruitment policy with Exiles programme “We don’t have anything recent on our opponents,” Asplin said. “You can look at old footage to see general themes and national profiles, but with the lack of rugby in this space, it is a bit of an unknown. “We just flip that and worry about ourselves. We will look to the team to show more game sense than the other countries, and measure them on big principles of play: can we gain and regain possession, can we capitalise on space?” The squad includes six players based overseas. “Around 18 or 20 overseas students were identified, but I’m sure there are many more out there and that will be a continuous work-on for us,” Asplin said. “We reviewed footage of the overseas boys and I made contact with a lot of their coaches to determine what level are they playing and how that compares to here.” A second match follows on Sunday against the winner of Malaysia’s midweek clash with Taiwan. The path to the title is marginally clearer after the withdrawal of South Korea, who failed to meet eligibility requirements, but there is no sign of Asplin taking it any less seriously. His squad have modelled their preparation on the WWII film Midway . “That movie provided the language we have used in the campaign,” he said. “It is about the importance of that meeting point, that midway for us, where players meet us at our rally point at home and there, and then we travel together to go to war.”