Hong Kong's Rugby Sevens: Try, try
again By Todd Crowell
HUA HIN, Thailand - "The dances will
continue to dance, and the horses will continue to
run." So said Deng Xiaoping to reassure Hong
Kongers about life after the return to China in
1997, 10 years ago this July 1. He might have
added: And the Hong Kong Rugby Sevens will go on,
and on.
Rugby played with seven-man teams
traces its origins as far back as the late 19th
century, but it really got its boost as a global
sport in Hong Kong. The annual Rugby Sevens was
cooked up in that bastion of British colonialism,
the Hong Kong Club, in 1975
when
the prospect of the British Union flag being
hauled down was no more than a far-distant worry.
Local rugby enthusiasts wanted to host a
major tournament in Hong Kong, but if the teams
had been composed of the regulation 15 players
with 80-minute matches, the event would have been
as long as the two-week soccer World Cup, or the
world cricket tournament now being played.
The solution: play the tournament using
seven players on a team with matches lasting
little more than 15 minutes each. A round-robin
tournament of two dozen teams could thus be packed
into one tight, exciting weekend.
But the
Rugby Sevens is more than just a sporting event.
It is the Hong Kong-expatriate social event of the
year, a kind of spring bacchanalia. Much of the
color and not a little of the action take place
not on the field but in the stands as the
otherwise buttoned-down stockbrokers and currency
traders let their hair down and their inhibitions
loose.
The fact that a dozen national
teams compete and the games are short (though
often high-scoring) presents an ever-changing
panorama of nationalism to bring out the loyalties
of Hong Kong's motley international community.
Over the years the Sevens has spawned its
own traditions and tribal rituals. For some reason
lost in history, it is obligatory to boo the
Australian team as it takes the field. The stands
are full of people with British Union flags
painted on their faces or wearing hats that are
supposed to make them look like Kiwis. And no
Sevens would be complete without at least one
streaker.
Ten years ago, when the handover
to China was a nervous 100 days in the future,
there was considerable anxiety whether the Sevens
would even survive. Two high-profile commercial
sponsors, Cathay Pacific Airways and the Hong Kong
and Shanghai Banking Corp, both pillars of the
British establishment for decades, announced that
they would end their generous support for the
games in 1998.
The companies threw out a
lot of smoke about reordering their advertising
priorities and such. But it was obvious they were
nervous about being so closely identified with
such an expatriate, one might even say colonial,
institution.
Fast-forward to 2007, and
Cathay Pacific is proudly back as a sponsor (the
HSBC slot has been taken by Credit Suisse). The
Rugby Sevens has easily weathered the change of
sovereignty and is firmly ensconced in Hong Kong's
social psyche (the expat side of it, anyway; the
Chinese majority is mainly indifferent) 10 years
after the British flag was hauled down forever.
Another thing that has not changed is the
Antipodean dominance of the games. Teams from
Asia, such as Malaysia, Thailand, South Korea and
even Hong Kong itself, compete, but none has ever
won a tournament.
In the 30-odd years
since the games began in 1976, Fiji has triumphed
11 times, New Zealand eight and Australia five
times. But of late the perfidious English have
returned to reclaim a small corner of their
ancient patrimony, having won the last four
tournaments.
Former British prime minister
John Major, the man who appointed the much reviled
(by Beijing) last governor, Chris Patten, was
present in 2006 to watch proudly as England scored
a try (why they call it a "try" rather than a
"success" is a mystery) in the dying seconds of
the final game to beat Fiji 26-24.
So the
big question for this year's Rugby Sevens, which
will be played this weekend (March 30-April 1) is
whether England will extend its winning streak.
That is to be decided on the field, but there are
other things that one can bank on.
The
Fijian team will undoubtedly perform its
traditional cibi war dance to psyche out
the opposition. The Australian team will be booed.
At least one streaker will cross the playing
pitch. Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme
chose.
Todd Crowell, a
Thailand-based correspondent for Asia Times
Online, is author of Farewell, My Colony: Last
Years in the Life of British Hong Kong.
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