Asian XVs Championship

Hong Kong are all-but at next year,s World Cup after an ill-disciplined and inexperienced Fijiana team were beaten 45-7 in the first game of the Asia/Oceania qualifier.

Japan delivered a complete all-round performance in beating Hong Kong 30-3 to capture the 2016 Women’s Asia Rugby Championship title in Tokyo on Saturday – but Hong Kong coach Jo Hull was quick to praise the “character” of her charges.

Hong Kong unleashed seven tries in a 40-7 away win over Singapore at the National Stadium in a warm-up match for the final leg of the Asia Rugby Women’s Championship series with Japan on 28 May.

Japan were far too strong for Hong Kong in the first leg of the Asian Championship, reduced to a home-and-away fixture between the two teams after Kazakhstan's withdrawal.

An impressive all-round team performance gave Japan their first ever win over Kazakhstan at their eighth attempt – and Kazakhstan’s first ever defeat to Asian opposition.

Kazakhstan put the disappointment of twelfth place in the World Cup behind them to make an impressive start to their Asian Championship defence.

Hong Kong's first test match was against Japan in 1998. Nine times they had met before yesterday, and nine times the result had been the same - a win for Japan, sometimes by a huge score (such as last year, when the result was 82-0 in Japan's favour). In half the matches played Hong Kong had failed to register a single point. But all that changed yerterday (19th May 2014)

Japan - narrowly beaten the final of final of last year's Asian championship - open their 2014 campaign with a comfortable win over Singapore.

Kazakhstan - 2013 Asian Champions, the continent's representative at the World Cup, and a team that has never lost a test to Asian opposition - survived a shock start to the defence of their crown on Saturday.