Volume 39, Number 04
A Rugby Excuse For A Party
Marie Teather looks into the rugby event of the year.
by Marie Teather
An unusual thing happens to all serious rugby loving and beer-guzzling expats across Japan during the last weekend of March. They disappear. The exodus begins on Thursday evening as rugby fanatics, or even those with a mere passing interest, finish work and pack a small holdall of casual clothes. They jump on a flight to Hong Kong, as do friends from England, South Africa, Australia, and beyond. By Friday evening, the city is heaving. Hotels are full, and the streets are awash with men in rugby shirts from cities the world over. It is as if some enigmatic black hole has opened up and vacuumed in those whose ears twitch at words like ‘scrum' and ‘drop kick', then three days later it throws them out again. The event? The Rugby Sevens. The location? Hong Kong. And the line-up for the weekend? Rugby, beer, and lots of it. Sounds like the perfect Stag weekend getaway.
Once in Hong Kong rugby fans head down to the Hong Kong Stadium where the tournament is played out from Friday afternoon and throughout Saturday and Sunday. The stadium seats 40,000 spectators and during the weekend the large TV screens, bars, beer stands and merchandise outlets outside the ground, see that the festivities overspill into the surrounding area and after hours. The fun to be had in this part of town is reportedly so drawing, that most visitors to the event fail to even make the 15-minute walk into the city center. In recent years the event has grown to be a solid fixture on the expat calendar, with tickets being sold out weeks in advance. (Luckily there are still plenty of opportunities to buy tickets outside the ground.) Managing Director of a Tokyo based recruitment company, James Incles, went to the tournament in 2007 and said, “the atmosphere was just electrifying, hedonistic even”.
Another visitor described the event to be “an alcohol fuelled party. It was mainly expats drinking and the rugby was secondary to the big party vibe. Most people didn't really know who was playing” he added, before also admitting that he still doesn't know who won the tournament. Remarkably, (and testament perhaps to the game of rugby where another well known British sport often loses credibility at international venues), there were no reported fights—the Hong Kong Sevens, it seems, is a weekend carnival with rugby being it's excuse.
For those not accustomed to the Rugby Sevens— or any variant of rugby for that matter—the game is perhaps a little easier to muster than the complexities of a standard Rugby League game. Instead of 15 players on a team, there are seven players and instead of 80 minutes playing time, one game lasts just 15 minutes long. (One minute for half time and each half is—yes you've got it—seven minutes.) This allows tournaments to be finished in a weekend and likewise the ensuing games are fast, agile, and speedily skilful.
Annually there are eight rugby sevens tournaments in the IRB (International Rugby Board) series worldwide but the Cathay Pacific/Credit Suisse Hong Kong Sevens is by far the premier crowd puller. Last year attendance figures hit an all-new high as 112,000 spectators watched games played out by 24 participating teams. Moreover the IRB announced that the tournament series was televised by 30 international broadcasters, in 11 different countries and reached 213 million homes.
Time for a little history. The first ever Rugby Sevens was organised in 1883 when a Scottish farmer, going by the name of Ned Haig, wanted to raise funds for his local club. (The tournament was reportedly well received.) Almost a century later and over to Hong Kong, the first ever Sevens in Asia was played in 1976 when a South African entrepreneur wanted his tobacco firm to sponsor a rugby tournament comprised of top international teams. This was the first time that any rugby tournament had attracted commercial sponsorship and these days with Cathay Pacific lending its name to the tournament; no expense is spared as the city gears up for the event.
Today Sevens Tournaments are clearly much more than a butcher's weekend charity cause, and as rugby continues to gain in popularity as recent international match-watching figures have suggested, no doubt more people will make this event a reoccurring date on their calendar.
The Hong Kong Sevens 2008 will kick-off on March 28 at 4.30pm and finish before 7pm on Sunday 30. Tickets are on sale now and are recommended for purchase through the Official Travel Agents as approved on the Hong Kong Sevens website and through Cathy Pacific. For more information see www.hksevens.com/index.html For flights to Hong Kong see www.cathaypacific.com.