Paul John, Head Coach of Hong Kong China 7s recently discussed the team’s performances in this season’s World Rugby HSBC Sevens Challenger 2024, in which the men finished 5th overall, narrowly missing out on the chance to compete for a spot as a core team, and the women ended up 9th overall.
The Challenger Series is incredibly competitive, and as we have seen from the final HSBCS SVNS leg that took place in Madrid, three of the eight teams from the Challenger were strong enough to go on and secure a place in the HSBC SVNS 2024-2025 season.
John said, “We need to keep playing in these big competitions, so for us to be part of any big international tournament means we have to expand those squads to be able to do that, and we have to develop the next group of players as well. To increase our base of players is exciting as we want to qualify for these competitions and to keep everybody motivated to maintain the current level and to increase them.”
He spoke on the Challenger as a whole and reflected, “I think for us to qualify again for the Challenger Series has shown a bit of consistency, so it was great for us to qualify again, as we need to keep playing at that level. This will allow us to keep improving.”
Hong Kong China Men 7s – Excellent Performances and Fine Margins
For the men, they will probably look back and acknowledge that performances and finish in the first leg in Dubai in January were difficult to recover from (where they were 7th). The fact they followed up so strongly in Montevideo to finish runner-up in the second leg and lose so closely against Germany in Munich to just miss out indicated the narrow margins. They still bounced back to claim 3rd in Germany.
Paul John commented, “I thought the boys were excellent and they played some tremendous stuff, and it came down to that one crunch game, again against Germany. They were excellent in Uruguay too and reached the final and performed really, really well. The disappointing performance was in Dubai and we reached a quarterfinal but lost to Germany where we were not as clinical as we could be, and eventually, the points difference made us fall down to that 7-8th playoff instead of the 5-6th playoff.”
Coming into Dubai at the start of the year, the men had played a lot of rugby over a long season but John called them an “excellent group but Sevens rugby can unfortunately be cruel and that's the nature of the game.”
In terms of how the men’s playing group now fares, they have three squads going against each other and two squads pushing for selection for the major tournaments, with a development squad also playing tournaments in the UK.
John concluded, “From my point of view, we definitely have more players with tournament experience and we have more players eligible for the Asian Games and Olympic qualifiers which creates a program that is more competitive and can only hopefully strengthen performances.”
Hong Kong China Women 7s – Building Depth
For the women, they also had a tough opening leg in Dubai where they ended up 10th, showed huge improvements in Uruguay, reaching a quarterfinal and as noted by Paul John were “one play away from beating Uganda, so there was nothing, nothing between the teams”. He added that it was “very, very pleasing how they improved within the tournament. For the third tournament (Krakow) we knew it would be tough because of the demands of the players joining the XVs squad for the Asia Rugby Women’s Championship.”
Hong Kong China Women ended up 9th in Poland but John was pragmatic and confident about the longer-term benefits of player and squad development. He continued, “We were apprehensive about Poland but I thought the women performed reasonably well and the girls learned a lot. It was good to get that final match win against Mexico. Overall, it gave us an opportunity to select eight new girls in Krakow and maybe 10 girls across the tournaments for the Challenger Series. So it was challenging from that point of view, but also really rewarding when you give so many more people a chance.”
He was also proud of the character and the attitude of the team in Krakow, adding, “The girls were excellent and the smiles on their faces, despite having some tough losses, they still gave a lot in each performance and for so many girls it was their first experience in the squad, but they didn't back off and didn't stand down and they had a great attitude. So it was a pleasure to be a part of that and we were overall pleased with how it went,”
John also highlighted the roles of the leaders on that final tour such as Captain Jessica Ho, Maggie (Au Yeung) and others, commending them for getting the “girls to get on really well as a group and they made massive strides, so we were pleased with the way it went.”
He was quick to point to the excellent work of Women’s Head Coach Andy Vilk and the staff. “They have done a great job of talent ID and organising the training so the team have done a fantastic job to find some more players. Now we're just waiting for things to get back and getting them together again as a squad and preparing for the Monaco Repechage in June 2024.”
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