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During the 2009 World Games, UR7s have provided 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. Here is the last of his entries...

Hi Guys! I'm back home in Hong Kong now, after what was a very disappointing World Games for us, whichever way you look at it.

Fiji ran away with the Gold, leaving favourites South Africa to the Bronze. We ended up at the bottom of a strong pile of teams, which is particularly disappointing when compared with our 24-7 victory over Silver medalists Portugal in Hong Kong earlier this year.

That said, only three of the team that faced the impressive Portugal were on the pitch at any time during this weekend - but now is not the time to start making excuses! The flip side is of course that new players such as So Hok Ken got a chance to play against top sides like South Africa and Argentina.

Encouraging

Head coach Dai Rees has made the point that you cannot win big games with 12 players, no matter how much experience they have. We need to start giving chances to new players, but stop short of handing out caps for nothing. The highlight of my weekend was probably our performance against Fiji. We managed to hold a side with a significant size and power advantage at 5-5 at half time.

We managed to put into practice a lot of the new philosophy that we have been learning over the last couple of weeks, and picked up tries as a result. It was also bitter sweet to see Chinese Taipei put in some fantastic performances, especially when they beat the States. The home crowd was surprisingly vocal and much larger than any of the players had expected.

Asian rugby going places

It was encouraging to see so many local fans out, which will no doubt help grow the game here in Asia. From my point of view, it is a huge shame that the World Cup won't be coming to Japan for another 10 years. Given the economic climate, it is completely understandable why England have been given the nod for 2015; no doubt it will be a hugely successful tournament with a massive following.

However history has shown that Japan can host international sports spectacles of the highest standard (think 2002 Football World Cup and more recently the Rugby Under 20s World Cup) and the Rugby World Cup 2019 will be no exception. On the bright side, Japan are fast improving - perhaps come 2019 they will be looking at a top 10 world ranking, which will certainly give the home crowd even more to cheer about.

Our next 7s tournament takes us to Shanghai, as part of the developing Asian 7s circuit. Hopefully we can improve on our World Games performance and live up to our 1st seed ranking for the East Asian Games in December.

I will see you then!

From Hong Kong

Rowan

Rowan’s World Games Diary: Scrimmaging with US before Friday

Rowan's World Games Diary: Hong Kong rugby on the up!