Hong Kong aim to ‘get one up on China’, as city rugby sevens teams gun for Asian joy
Liam Herbert sets men twin goals while electric Chong Ka-yan promises no let up from women in HSBC SVNS pursuit
Hong Kong rugby sevens mainstay Liam Herbert has targeted the twin goals of “getting one up on China”, and earning a HSBC SVNS 3 shot over this weekend’s Asia Rugby Sevens Series leg in Sri Lanka.
The city team powered to victory in last month’s first leg in Hangzhou. A repeat performance in Colombo would book their spot in the rebranded global sevens competition and lay down a marker for next month’s National Games at Kai Tak Stadium.
“We went to Hangzhou to show what we could do after all the time and effort we’ve put in, and the next step is to show in Sri Lanka that we can do it again,” Herbert said.
Herbert said his side had heeded the lessons learned from this year’s Challenger Series, when they failed to qualify for the third and final leg. In 2024, they came desperately close to the top four finish that would have earned them a crack at world series qualification.
“We really fell off mentally last year and our fitness wasn’t there, which was huge,” Herbert said. “We were doing two to three sprints in a game and were so tired we couldn’t do any more.
“We’ve not changed much about how we play, but last year we did a lot of power work [in training] … now we have lots of continuous running”.