HONG KONG 7s - 2006

Wan Chai is chokka with big, beefy boofheads from a hundred different nations (I'm amazed how rugby players are a tribe of their own, no matter where they're from!) and they're down there in Lockhart Street as we speak seriously hitting the bars and even the meanest mamma sams are looking happy ...

... so we all know what's just on the horizon!

Yup, it's HK7s time again. This weekend! YES! Tickets here sold out in two hours but hardly any locals can make Friday's games so I'm going for free on a NZ ticket! YES!!!

After that? Well, it was so much fun at Devil's Advocate last year's HK7s and during the WTO riots I'll be in that Lockhart Street pub the entire weekend watching on their live-feed big screen TV!

And here's the gem so far: just now we met a bunch of boofy beefheads ex-college gridiron players from North Carolina down at Delany's, our local Irish bar, and they were being so very very funny, saying all sorts of things like "We're here to check out this HK7s but we don't reckon it'll be as good as American football" and "This year we're sending all these NFL washouts so we have it in the bag!"

Isn't that GREAT!! So charmingly naive! I was being funny and saying "Yeah, you'll smash 'em like guitars!" and they were going "We'll smash 'em like the whole orchestra!" not realising my reference was to the Yank Swimming Team saying "We'll smash 'em like guitars!" about the Oz Swimming Team when they arrived for the 2000 Olympics and then getting so totally and utterly humiliated!

So funny, these US supporter guys not realising they don't realise they don't stand a snowball's chance in hell and the only reason they got best of the Second Rankers in HK7s last year was because they bought in three Fijians and a Maori. They are sooooo going down! Yes! Yes! Yes!

And I loved these guys being so obnoxious because it's nice having a team to hate and they just gave me one! Honestly, how can anyone be so stupid as to imagine bloody NFL washouts have a chance against Fiji, NZ, South Africa, England, Australia and not to mention Germany, Italy and Tonga et al!? USA could send it's very best players and STILL not have a snowball's chance in hell!

And on a less vengeful note, Madagascar has sent a team for the first time, using their left-over Tsunami Relief money. Everyone's making fun of them because they're all such little guys, but no one seems aware that Madagascar celebrated "100 Years of Rugby" last year with a massive celebration involving the entire island, and that despite only being little guys they reach the semi-finals of Trans-Africa Rugby 15s Cup most years, and that the entire country is as Rugby Mad as any Pacific Island Nation ...

... and that these people have been proven, via DNA testing, to be the ancestors of the Fijians AND the entire Polynesian races, so it's not just in the genes: it is the ORIGIN of the genes! I think they are going to surprise everyone BIGTIME ...

... and their first game is against Fiji Friday afternoon AND I'LL BE THERE! YES!!!

See you later.

This letter was simply filling in the details for someone who wasn't able to see the games at the time and was desperate to know what was happening:

Aching all over! Two days of sitting in a pub - mostly Devil's Advocate on Lockhart Road in Wan Chai - and I feel like I've played every game. Hurt everywhere.

The third-ranking semi-finals are on so watched China win against HK and then scarpered. Oh, today, China's playing all their team members who have Irish accents - Irish Chinese - so they're playing a lot more fairly. I guess, och ai, at least those Mainlanders who were raised in Ireland understand the concept of Sportsmanship!

Now, who's who so far:

Third-rankers playing for the Bowl: HK, Singapore, Italy, China, USA, Sri Lanka, Madagascar (so sad! They came here so confident!) and Taiwan.

Quarter-finals: HK beat Singapore, China beat Italy, Sri Lanka beat USA (snigger!) and Taiwan beat Madagascar. Now on, Semi-finals China thrashed HK decisively, 36 to 7 or something. Didn't care who won out of Sri Lanka and Taiwan so am not watching it ... which is kinda sad because Sri Lanka said Rugby became huge to them after the heart-break of the tsunami, so they decided that when they felt fully recovered they'd send a team to HK7s to celebrate. And here's me not caring! (Madagascar said the same thing about tsunami recovery and HK7s, but they've always been Rugby Mad! Didn't need a giant wave to teach them to value it!)

Second-ranking teams playing for the Plate: Kenya, Russia, France, South Korea, Canada, Japan, Portugal and Wales.

Quarter-finals: Kenya beat Russia, France beat South Korea, Canada beat Japan but only just, and Wales beat Portugal. I'm determined to watch Wales play later, but only because their team is so gorgeous. I don't know where Tom Cruise's ancestors come from, but the entire team looks like a collection of Young Tom Cruises. Mmmmm, yummy! Not to be missed! Also gorgeous are the Argentinians but all their guys have German surnames and they are probably the relics from Hitler's Master-Race Breeding Program so I'm determined not to admire them too much.

And the BIG MEN playing for the CUP!!!: Fiji, Scotland, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Argentina, Samoa and England.

Quarter finals: Fiji beat Scotland but only just; really sloppy game. Fiji's going to have to get it together before meeting NZ in just over an hour! Then NZ beat Australia (big punch-up mid-match, bloody Australians! But it was NZ's Nigel Hunt who got sin-binned for it and he was only defending the Kiwis beneath the mound of Aussies! Guess the Sri Lankan ref. was blind!)

Then South Africa beat Argentina, and England beat Samoa. So close. Samoa had a brilliant run in the final seconds that looked like it won them the game, but the Blind Sri Lankan Ref didn't give it to them. Poor Samoa, it's been fluttering on the edges of greatness for years now! It deserved a shot! Boooo hiss Sri Lankan Referees!

Devil's Advocate then had a bunch of Aussie's arrive who wanted to watch the Australian Grand Prix and they kicked up a big fuss about it so the pub switched over one of the giant TV screens, and then these pushy Oz-dunderheads wanted the HK7s sound turned down so they could hear the cars zooming around. I mean, what's there to hear? Like brmmmm brrrmmmmmmm brmmmmm!

We left and are now watching it in another pub, this time surrounded by Scotsmen. It's fun being the only Fiji supporter in the game against Scotland, but it was kinda OK because we all agreed that Fiji, och ai!, was playing BRAE WEE BADLY!

Oh, better go: Kenya is about to play France and I really like the Kenyans. They gave Fiji a run for their money yesterday. 29 to 7, sure, but they really kept Fiji from scoring. Nice nail-biting game there for a while.

Will write more later!

Denise

LATER LETTER

China played Taiwan for the Bowl. Politically volatile, I know, but that's just how it ended up.

So, what happened?

China slaughtered Taiwan in something like 58 to 0, which undoubtedly will have the match totally approved by CCP and they'll probably put the game on high rotation on Chinese television ... needless to say, without mentioning they were Third-Rankers, but I didn't mind since discovering a lot of the China team have Irish accents, since they're from Irish boarding schools, which is so cute! Like Cho Chang from Harry Potter, only not quite.

And the best bit was right towards the end of the game when a Chinese player said something to a Taiwanese player and the Taiwanese guy smacked him one big-time. The Chinese guy looked all innocent and was spreading his hands at the ref like he was asking that the Taiwanese guy be sent off but the ref ignored it.

I do hope the papers say what was said but it was obviously something volatile; perhaps he said "Reunification!" or "We have 40 nuclear war-heads aimed into the heart of your capital city!" or "President Chen shot himself!" or "This is a taste of what'll happen when we invade your country."

Plate Finals was Kenya against someone, maybe France! I think the French won but could be wrong since I was having a meal at the time. No, no, I'm wrong! It was the Welsh! But I wasn't very interested since the Young Tom Cruises never seem to score so the coverage is always of the ugly guys with Hobbit faces and Hobbit surnames and that's hardly fun!

And the biggest biggest news: Fiji in the Finals for the Cup!! Yaaayyyy! Against England, I think, but after the brilliant games defeating the Kiwis, who cares.

EVEN LATER LETTER

Deeply, deeply sad. So heartbroken I can hardly tell you! Fiji lost the Cup, and under really dreadful circumstances too.

It was the last five seconds, and Fiji was a fraction ahead and looked like scoring again and there was a tackle and all the English guys threw themselves atop the guys on the ground and the ref blew the whistle and everyone separated and there was a Fiji guy just lying there, not moving, with his arm at this impossible angle like it was snapped off in the middle of the forearm, and the stretcher bearers came running on, and we were all going "What happened? What happened?" "Who is it?" and the replay was being done from all different angles trying to see what had gone down ... when suddenly the ref blew the whistle and the game began again but the entire Fiji team was watching the stretcher bearers who weren't even yet off the field and England scored and with the conversion it meant they won. It was just so wrong and so dirty I'm deeply, deeply sad about it.

I haven't seen the papers yet so I still don't know what happened. SMS from Fiji said they thought it was Daunivocu, which is just heart-breaking, although not as heart-breaking as if it had been Serevi or William Ryder - everyone is seeing him as Serevi's eventual replacement - but Daunivocu is just a beautiful man-mountain who scored spectacular try after try, so it's serious and I'm upset about it.

Since no one can ever accuse Fijians of having bones that are easily broken, and this one was snapped off backwards, all I can think is that, while inside that scrum, someone must have held the arm upwards and someone else must have kicked it. Oh, you really have to see that break.

Oh, and the Cup was handed over by Donald in his best red bow-tie and by John Major, former British Prime Minister, looking not a single day older than when he lost to Tony Blair. Love to know how he accomplished that since it must be ten or twelve years ago I last saw image of him.

OK, that's it for 2006 HK7s and I'm never mentioning this subject to you ever again.

Denise

Found this link to a score tried by Tomasi Cama back when he played for Fiji in 2006. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVAx6wQcrUQ&NR=1

AND AN EVEN LATER LETTER (there's no keeping me down for long, is there!)

Cheered up somewhat and just read the papers and here's what's new:

Sunday's headlines read "We Spanked the Yanks" and it was all about HK beating the US. It was HK's first ever HK7s win and so it was MAJOR but they fair-mindedly added that the US team was so weak it wasn't even fun to tease them this way! (You'll notice I'm barely sniggering anymore either.)

Also everyone's saying that the HK team should have a red bow-tie on the front of their shirts, and some Kiwi made up a Hong Kong Hakka that really took off in the South Stand. It goes "Armani, Armani, LV, LV." etc, etc. Cute, la?

What else can I tell you? Oh, everyone walked all over Madagascar, which is sad because they were so confident when they arrived. The closest they came to a real game was playing Russia which had a score of something like 17 to 24. All their other games, well ... let's not mention the scores! Very embarrassing!

Oh and in their interview after the Fiji game they said they realised they had to develop exceptional skills to take them on again, but they intend to develop those skills quickly so they can avenge themselves in the near future. (Oooh, Fiji's on notice! Tremble, everyone!) Then they reckoned they were a match for the other teams they'd play later. So didn't happen for the poor darlings ...

... although they did get to meet Jackie Chan, who is Madagascar's biggest star, and that thrilled
them no end. Did it make the trip worth it? I'll have to read tomorrow's papers to find out and let you know.

Hope you're having fun in England? Good wedding? Is it freezing? Don't you wish you were here?

Denise