• • Facebook
  • Digg
  • Del.icio.us
  • Technorati
  • Reddit
  • Stumble Upon
  • Furl

During the 2009 World Games, UR7s are providing a glimpse of what’s going on behind the scenes courtesy of an exclusive diary from one of Hong Kong’s key talisman, Rowan Varty.

Hello UR7s!

You might be wondering what Hong Kong is doing at a 7s tournament – we are admittedly a smaller rugby playing nation. But we have had the luxury of hosting arguably the best 7s tournament in the world annually for over 30 years now, and the popularity of rugby as a result - in particular rugby 7s - has sky rocketed in recent years.

Because of the success of the Hong Kong Sevens, the HKRFU has looked after the development of rugby here very well, and we are spoilt with the quality of coaching and infrastructure that we have.

Our new head coach Dai Rees comes straight off coaching Wales 7s and national representative squads, as well as coaching at Newport-Gwent Dragons for a number of years. Fortunately, we have backed up growing expectations with some great results in recent years, including beating Tonga and Portugal at this years Hong Kong Sevens.

Restarts, Restarts and more Restarts

Tonight we had our final training session before we leave for the World Games on Wednesday!

The build-up has been unusually short, given that we received the invite at the last minute, but everyone is excited about going nevertheless!

One of the most important aspects of 7s recently has been ball retention from the kick-off. Teams like England and Fiji are exceptional at it, and it has been an area we’ve worked on a fair bit since the World Cup.

The squad that travels to Taiwan has some new faces, including Salon Yiu, who only recently took up rugby after leaving athletics. He claims to run the 100m in 10.8 seconds, which will make him very useful this weekend!

Our expectations? Our pool is tough, with both Fiji and Argentina having had very strong years on the circuit. The game that we will target, with all respect to them of course, is Japan. We have a great rivalry with Japan in 7s.

Battle of Asia

In the 15-a-side game, they have a stronghold on Asian rugby for the time being, but the number 1 spot in 7s has been handed between us a number of times in the last few years - that will be the game to watch I assure you!

It’s great that there are three Asian teams at this tournament (the other is the host, Chinese Taipei). I think I speak on behalf of all Asian rugby fans when I say that a Rugby World Cup in Asia is long overdue, and would be an unforgettable experience. Hopefully the decision which is made at the end of this month will be in our favour.

Finally, we have been looking at the schedule for the other events at the World Games for our free time. I Reckon its going to be between watching the sky-diving or tug-of-war!

Time to get packed, see you in Taiwan!

Rowan