HONG KONG 7s - 2007

THE GREATEST PARTY ON EARTH

I have to tell you I'm just crazy about HK7s. 2008 begins this weekend, so here's my letter about what happened last year:

Well, all over and you know what happened: Fiji got to the Finals playing Samoa and we were simply outclassed, so I won't comment on it. Except to say it was a very classy game, and so close it was just sad, sad, sad that we weren't the ones with the miracle ending.

Won't tell you the score because you already know that too.

But you don't know the good fun we had so I'll tell you about that!!! Total three-day party.

You know, right, that whole plane-load of Fijians flew out for the weekend? But you don't know that when Glynis's friend Alisi heard tickets were almost impossible to get in HK (the rest of the world buys them out) Alisi actually managed to find and gift me a ticket for Friday. Lovely lady, I thank you!

FRIDAY: Good, good day. We Fijians spread out so we had four huge blocks of us in different stands and we just went for it. I was hoarse by sunset. Fiji massacred Sri Lanka, Scotland and gosh, forgotten already ... but you'll know ... but they were a really fiesty great team. Great game.

And when Fiji wasn't playing we followed the usual 7s rules: everyone cheers for: (in descending order of importance.)

1) their own team,

2) the HK team (we were actually not bad this year. That guy Wong can really play.)

3) whoever is playing against Australia. (You'll recall Australia "sledged" the first time they played HK7s, so the Big 7s Rule is "Never let Australia forget they're slimeballs.") (The Townsville crew were very hurt that Australia was always booed when they came out onto the field. And when I explained they refused to believe it.).

4) the Minnows (the little third world nations who can't really afford to come, but have.)

5) those nations beloved by your own nation.

6) any team playing against those nations hated by your own nation.

Beyond that, you toss a coin to choose a team, and then you really get into it bigtime giving them all you've got.

Oh, and the best fun was the Fijians who switched shirts and flags and morphed into Tongans for all the Tongan games! Had to join in because it's fun being Tongan! Oh, oh, oh, good thing: after they defeated the rest of their own pool and got into the big time - The Cup Games - the Tongan team went for photographs and it turned out they'd forgotten to bring a flag so a flunky came running out to borrow one of ours and when they returned it later the entire team had signed it for us. That was so great.

And Tunesia were great too. I commented on how unexpectedly good they were, and was told that they'd spend three months training in Fiji. Is that true?

SATURDAY: Didn't have a ticket but I sooo had to go and by sheer luck I managed to score half the tickets from a big Townsville group because the wives wanted to go shopping instead. Sure, we were supposed to be with the Townsvillians but the Fijians were more fun so Keith and I donned Fiji colours, grabbed our Fiji flags and joined them instead.

And when the scalpers realised we had all these spare tickets, they offered us heaps of money for them ... but we noticed a crowd of sad-looking Fijian soldiers - turned out they'd just flown in from Iraq - standing outside the stadium so we felt honoured to give all our spare Townsville tickets to them. You go, Fiji Infantry in Iraq!!!

SUNDAY: Had, had, HAD to go!!! Live-action TV couldn't do it for me anymore. Keith and co went to Devil's Advocate to watch but I slipped off to the stadium at lunchtime and regret to say found a scalper and paid major money for a ticket. Then, when I got in, the Fiji stands were all full to bursting point, so I mooched around the stadium, grabbing seats whereever I could find one, but always racing down to join our Fiji crew for the Fiji games. Didn't matter there weren't seats then because everyone was standing anyway.

And mooching was good fun too, and I met some amazing people and had wonderful conversations ...

... oh, and must tell you ... met a guy from one of the Embassies in Malaysia and we were chatting about Islam when he suddenly looks up, freezes and says quite loudly "Good heavens! That's the Malaysian Royal Family." To me, it looked like just a large bunch of Asian guys in rugby jersies, but they heard my new friend and all turned to glower and you could see it was true because they weren't the least bit happy they were recognised. The moment they turned away again, my guy pointed out which ones were the crown prince and his brothers. The rest were their friends and bodyguards. Made me wonder if Malaysia isn't planning to field a team in the next few years.

And also interesting - albeit strange - was that Cama Jr incident when Fiji played NZ. Did you see that one? If you haven't go to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abY3U3hcQOU It's all there! And please note the actions of "unnecessarily large" Number 1 (I heard a gorgeous little English kid of about four say about him earlier: "That man is unnecessarily large")

From the stands, it was all really icky and none of the Fiji crowd could explain why it had happened, but later I'm talking to a lovely old English guy who'd been to every HK7s ever and he explained the history behind it. Don't know if it's true, but here's what I heard:

20 years ago at the HK7s, the young Serevi came from nowhere to be the most magic player to watch - funny and amazing and forever doing things that seemed impossible, and the HK newspapers dubbed him The Sorcerer - but then Cama Sr organised it so Serevi couldn't play 7s anymore. The English guy said it was just spite and resentfulness because Cama Sr saw he was being outclassed, and I guess this incident arose out of the other - that young Cama inherited his father's hatred of Serevi's magic; either that or has inherited his father's spite-gene - but why didn't the ref do something? Probably wanted to see Cama Jr get smacked around a bit.

Anyway, to wind up the story of The Greatest Party on Earth, we Fijians hung around the grounds until well after the 20th announcement of "the day is over, please follow the yellow lines out of the stadium." - and the announcer was getting very testy by then - but we did get to meet some of the Fiji team and get photos and autographs and everything, and then Alisi called over the partying Samoan team to get photos but instead they came over and did their "we beat you" haka just for us, looking most fierce until the end when they all grinned and waved and were very charming, but wouldn't pose for individual photos and no autographs.

And then, as we were all finally leaving, Stanley bloody Whippy dropped the giant bottle of champagne - about three feet tall - the Fiji team had won for coming second which they'd given to us to take to the party for them ... and a planeload of Fijians all stood around the smashed mess - while all around us, circling like sharks, were hordes of Haka cleaning ladies, sensitive to our pain but still wanting to get the mess cleaned up so they could go home - wondering if we should pick up the pieces and glue the bottle back together again and hope no one would notice. Needless to say, there was no singing and dancing as we walked down the hill towards the Causeway Bay MTR!

And needless to say, smashed knee-caps or no smashed knee-caps, Keith is going to be joining the HK 7s rugby team because that's the only way I'm going to be able to get tickets for next year!

Denise