Times have changed, and Manenti has Australia back to playing the free-flowing style that helped cement their legend when sevens rugby was in its formative years.

“It was amazing and a very surreal experience – to think it had been 1988 since we had won, and we had beaten Fiji, who own the place,” Manenti said.

“It’s something I’ll never forget. It really was one of those nights where everything went our way. We showed a bit of courage, and we were behind and we found a way to win.”

Australia return to town for next weekend’s Hong Kong Sevens looking to reignite their HSBC World Rugby Sevens Series campaign. They have not won a tournament since that drought-breaker in November, but arrive fresh from a third-place finish in Vancouver, sealed with a 20-5 win over Ireland.

That result put them fifth in the table on 94 points and with their eyes both on leaders New Zealand, on 120 points, and on a place in the 2024 Paris Olympics, with three qualifying tournaments to go.

Since taking over the men’s programme in 2021, Manenti has been scouring the playing fields of Australia for untapped – and uncapped – potential.

Surprise winners of last season’s Sevens Series title – the nation’s first – Australia saw a number of stars lured away before the current campaign, with Corey Toole, for one, signing with ACT Brumbies and now tearing it up in Super Rugby Pacific.

This season, 21-year-old flier Dietrich Roache leads the way in the DHL Impact Player Award, and Tim Clements is thriving in the engine room.

Manenti kept his cards close to his chest about the squad due for Hong Kong, but said winning in the city was unlike anything he or his players had experienced before. The plan was to keep playing the same way.

“We now feel we’ve got a lot of attacking weapons,” he said. “Our real challenge has been aiming up without the football, but when we’re good, we can really force some turnovers from our defence, and then we’ve got some decent attacking threats.”

In Manenti’s previous incarnation in charge of Australia’s women’s sevens set-up, he helped discover dual-code stand-out Maddison Levi, who tops the season’s Series tallies with 44 tries and 220 points. She is among the driving forces as that squad head to Hong Kong second in the standings behind New Zealand.

Next weekend is the first time the men and women will play full World Series tournaments simultaneously, and Manenti says extra buzz is building about what was already the biggest tournament on the calendar.

“Our girls are obviously tracking really well, and New Zealand and Australia look destined to keep meeting each other in finals,” he said. “It’d be almost an injustice if those two don’t meet for that first female final in Hong Kong.

“They’re certainly at each other’s heels, but our girls are pretty keen to put a Hong Kong trophy on the mantelpiece.”

While the Aussies surprised the crowds in November, it seems the crowds also surprised the Aussies. Long painted as the tournament’s bad boys – blame their roughhouse tactics in the 1980s – they were almost welcomed back to town.

“It was funny, because all the talk pre-tournament was the fans were going to go at the Australians, but it was nowhere near as nasty as I remembered,” Manenti said.

“Maybe it was that we were the underdogs, but at the end we felt very much loved and supported in Hong Kong.

“Now, I don’t want you to put a target on our backs. We’re happy to fly under the radar if need be.

“I said to the boys, it’s more than likely they’ll never have two Hong Kong tournaments in one season again. We could write a piece of history that probably can’t be repeated.”