Canada retain Hong Kong 7s

Before this year Hong Kong have never made much of an impact on their own sevens tournament, finishing bottom of their pool most years, and being confined to the Bowl in 2013 and 2014. However they are now full-time professionals and that is having a huge impact on their performance.

On Day One, they topped the all-Asian Pool B, with wins impressive wins over both Kazakhstan and China – a huge psychological boost for a team that tends to look up to its bigger neighbour. It has to be said that China were not at their full strength, but now that Hong Kong know they can beat them it makes the Asian Olympic qualifier later this year very interesting indeed.

The fourth Asian team in the competition – Japan – also won their pool, beating Netherlands in the final game from the last play. They too know that on their day they can be a match for the Chinese, and beating one of Europe’s leading teams will have done their self-belief no harm.

However Canada were always the team to beat and, despite not having all of their World Series players on show, were far too strong for their Pool A rivals, cantering through to the quarter-finals without conceding a point.

Quarter-finals on Day 2 went to form, with all the pool winners – plus Netherlands – reaching the final four with few problems. This set up two terrific semi-finals, which both went down to the final play with Canada beating Netherlands 17-12 while Hong Kong could not quite climb back from two early scores, going down to Japan 10-5.

The final and third place games were equally enthralling, with both games being won by a single score, Netherlands just holding off the hosts for third place with a 14-7 win, while Canada lifted the title with a 19-12 win over Japan.

Elsewhere China came back impressively on Day 2 to reverse their pool defeat and beat Asian rivals Kazakhstan 26-5 in the plate semi-final, before seeing off a Samoan team who had a great tournament, performing well beyond their seeding to see off Argentina in both the pool and the plate semis.

Papua New Guinea lifted the bowl ahead of Tunisia, and Singapore finished 11thahead of Mexico, who showed how far behind the rest of the world Caribbean and central American rugby currently is as their failed to score a point over the two days.

Pool A

Pool B

Pool C

Bowl semi-finals (9th/12th)

11th/12th

Bowl final (9th/10th)

Quarter-finals

Plate semi-finals

7th Place

Final: (5th place)

Cup Semi-finals

Third Place

Cup Final