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Hong Kong Sevens Baby!
Three days of rugby, beer, rugby, beer, rugby, beer,
rugby, beer, etc, etc!
So, how much beer do you reckon we both managed to
consume over a three day rugby festival? Forty, fifty, sixty pints each?
Actually, we only drank one three pint jug of beer (Andrea, that means it
holds three pints!) and that was during the first day of the 7s and only
three beers between us the night England won the 7s! No really! Where we
sat you had to go out to the concourse to get a beer, which meant you
missed the rugby and potentially lost your seats! Also, by the end of the
day we were always knackered as we had been at the stadium for over twelve
hours!
One thing we did manage to do in between rugby was go
and visit the "inside out" building on Hong Kong Island, which just
happens to be owned by HSBC. Almost everything is see-through, the lifts,
escalators and lifts are all visible from the outside of the building and
you can see all the way up through the building from the inside!
We also found a great little restaurant that only the
locals used, as it was so far off the main road and small you would walk
past it if you blinked! They only had five tables in the entire place,
but the food was terrific. It didn't matter at all that we didn't
understand a word of what they where saying, or visa-versa, or the fact
that we had to point at pictures on the wall to order our food as we
couldn't tell what was what!
Anyway, the rugby:
Fiji kicked the tournament off playing new boys
Madagascar, followed by England playing Hong Kong. When England came into
the stadium for their allocated warm-up period, the stadium announcer
said, "Ladies and gentlemen, England are in the house!" He only ever did
this when England arrived, not even for Hong Kong or Fiji! I reckon he
had to be an Englishman myself! It was amazing to hear how many cheers
they got, especially after the reception they received in Wellington.
Obviously the Australians, Kiwis, South Africans, Fijians and all
non-English home nations booed, but everyone else cheered and the strength
of support from the English was awesome! There were no upsets on Day One,
although we did cheer our hearts out for Portugal, who only lost 14-17 to
Wales!
On Day Two we got to the stadium for about 09:30am and
sat in the east stand until the sun hit the seats in the early afternoon,
at which point we moved to the west stand. The "party" stand is the south
stand, where you have to queue to get in for most of the day and miss the
rugby, but then again, like Wellington, a large number of people are not
there for the rugby! The south stand was full of people in fancy dress
and desperate women, in many senses of the word, who wanted to get on
television!
The best games of Day Two were when Japan narrowly lost
with the very last play of the match to New Zealand 19-24 and the
Russia/Madagascar game was great to watch as although neither team had a
clue defensively, they showed some great moments of attacking flair.
Finals Day, Day three, was filled with excitement and
drama. England only just beat Samoa, in the quarter-finals, with the help
of a couple of controversial decisions, perfectly correct, but
controversial decisions. One involving a very late stiff-arm tackle to
Simon Amor, which led to a Samoan try being disallowed after it was
given. Then after they thought they had scored the winning try it was
disallowed again, as the referee realised that the touch judge had his
flag up for a foot in touch! It was the same touch judge who led to both
tries being disallowed! He won't be going to Samoa for a holiday anytime
soon!
In the semi-final, against South Africa, it kicked off
big style. Firstly Simon Amor (again) unnecessarily shoved one of the
South African subs out of his way, then started to mouth off to one their
players. Then one of the Boks spear-tackled Matthew Tait, at 24-0 and
with only seconds to go, and was yellow carded. When the whistle went the
South African sub wanted to have a go at Simon Amor, Mike Friday, the
England Manager, wanted a go at the South African management because of
the spear-tackle and generally handbags were being wielded and dummies
spat out all over the place!
Anyway, China beat Chinese Taipei, or Taiwan as they
are better known, in the Bowl Final and unfortunately Wales beat Kenya in
the Plate Final.
Onto the Cup Final and England versus Fiji. Half-time
and England are winning 19-7 thanks to tries by Tom Varndell, Ben Gollings
and Matthew Tait. We managed to get a message displayed on the huge
television screen in the stadium for our nieces and nephew, Emma, Scott,
Ellie and Charlie. In the second half Fiji hit back with three tries of
their own and looked to have won the game. However, with less than a
minute to go Fiji where given a penalty and the game looked over,
but somehow, with the clock ran down and the next break in play ending it
all, England won the ball back and quick hands and great vision from Henry
Paul and Dave Strettle put Ben Gollings through to score and convert the
winning try and the stadium erupted! England have now won the Hong Kong
7s title four times in a row, which no other team has ever done!
That final try from Ben Gollings, at the time of
writing this, takes his all time tally to 133, two more than his closest
rival, South Africa's Fabian Juries, and to 1467 points in an England
sevens jersey, well ahead of Waisale Serevi on 1195.
The whole spectacle was incredible and really well
organised, as it should be given we were celebrating thirty years of Hong
Kong 7s. The free-for-all seating arrangement did mean that we got to the
stadium just after 07:30am on finals day to find a seat without a
newspaper draped over it, which apparently means "mine!" However, we got
seats on the front row behind the press box and right on the half-way
line. Thanks to David from Bradford, the Martins from Belfast and the St.
George-Illawara fans for making the finals day such great fun. Also, big
thanks to Richard, David's son-in-law, for taking my camera and getting me
some great photos of the Cup presentation, which would not have been
possible from where I was sitting. |