Hong Kong Sevens - History

History

The Hong Kong Seven heads were established in 1976 after a discussion between the chairman of the HKRFU, South African entrepreneur, A.D.C. "Tokkie" Smith, Duncan McTavish (HKRFC then captain), Trevor J. Bedford OBE (Chairman of Hong Kong Land, Jardine Matheson Limited, Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group and Director of HSBC) and Ian Gow, a Rothmans' Tobacco company executive. Gow wanted his firm to sponsor a rugby union tournament with top teams from throughout the world. McTavish and Smith suggested that a rugby sevens tournament would be more logistically feasible and be a better spectacle than a 15-a-side tournament. After an initial proposal was refused by the Rugby Football Union in England, the HKRFU changed its focus and sent out invitations to Asian and Pacific sides.

On 28 March 1976, clubs from Indonesia, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Tonga, Japan, Sri Lanka, Malaysia and Fiji participated in the first Hong Kong Sevens Tournament at the Hong Kong Football Club in Happy Valley sponsored by Rothmans' Tobacco and Cathay Pacific. This was an important step as this was one of the first rugby tournaments that attracted commercial sponsorship. Of the countries represented in the inaugural sevens tournament, only Australia and New Zealand did not send national sides, instead being represented by the Wallaroos and the Cantabrians respectively. These two clubs met in the final where the Cantabrians won 24-8.

The series then grew into a competition with national representative sevens sides competing, and with this growth, the tournament moved to the Hong Kong Stadium in 1982.

The Hong Kong Sevens were ahead of their time, and an influential force in the modernisation of rugby union, for example, the Hong Kong Sevens were one of the first rugby union tournaments to attract major sponsorship, when the airline Cathay Pacific sponsored the 1976 tournament. They also provided a level of cosmopolitan international competition, which tended not to exist in rugby before the first Rugby World Cup in 1987, especially since Hong Kong was not seen as one of the "Big Eight", and other than some involvement with France, the Commonwealth teams tended to be notoriously clannish. By 1986, the Hong Kong Sevens were held up as a positive example to others:

"This Seven-a-Side international tournament is without a doubt the most spectacular, exotic, best organized Rugby competition of its kind in the world, and it has consistently produced the highest standard of Sevens Rugby seen anywhere.

"I was not surprised on my first visit to see quality play from the Australian, New Zealand, Fijian, and British players, but I was staggered at the amazingly high quality play produced by countries I never even knew played Rugby. South Korea and Western Samoa were every bit as good as Japan and Tonga. Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore found their lack of sheer size and bulk an insuperable handicap, but against each other they displayed a range of running and handling skills which demanded unqualified praise. Papua New Guinea, Sri Lanka and the Solomon Islands were inevitably outgunned by the teams from the major Rugby-playing nations but they still have a remarkably high level of skill which promises well for the future of the game."

"The week of the Hong Kong tournament allows 24 Rugby-playing nations to intermingle for several days, and the huge cross-fertilisation of ideas can only be beneficial in the long term for the emerging nations. After the first day of the play when the top eight seeded teams meet the smaller fish in a pool system, the second day is divided into three different competitions... The strength of this great tournament is that on the opening day the most famous players in the world share a pitch with unknown opponents from countries where Rugby is a minority sport... While tournaments like the Hong Kong Sevens continue to be played, Rugby administrators can be confident that the game will continue to thrive in over 100 countries worldwide."

However, despite this apparent diversity, some of the same old problems which had dogged international rugby were still manifest in the Hong Kong Sevens in the 1980s - for example, in a photograph of the Hong Kong vs Bahrain game at the tournament in 1984, the teams do not appear to include anyone who is ethnically Arabian or Chinese, instead both teams are quite clearly of northern European ethnic origin.

In 1994, the venue was deemed too small for the tournament and was rebuilt into a 40,000 seat stadium now named the Hong Kong Stadium. Today, 24 national representative sides compete in the tournament. These include the 16 'core' members of the IRB Sevens World Series, plus eight further invited teams.

In 1997 and 2005, the Hong Kong Sevens was not held; taking its place was the Rugby World Cup Sevens, which Hong Kong hosted in both years. Fiji won both World Cup Sevens tournaments. In 1998, the first tournament after the transfer of sovereignty to China, tickets were not sold internationally and the event was stricken with a bankrupt sponsor Peregrine. The Union's Organising Committee worked hard, and successfully implemented its marketing strategy to get the local population involved through "Friday Night is Party Night" and secured CSFB as sponsors "on a spur-of-the-moment", the event was a comparatively huge success. In 2011, after HSBC negotiated title sponsorship to the entire World Sevens Series tournaments, it was no longer possible for Credit Suisse to sponsor the Hong Kong leg after 14 years.