Rugby-Hong Kong’s World Cup journey not over, says coach despite playoff defeat

Hong Kong coach Lewis Evans is confident they can challenge for a place at next year’s Rugby World Cup after an encouraging performance against Tonga in their playoff clash on Saturday. Evans’ squad of mostly part-timers slipped to a 44-22 defeat on Australia’s Sunshine Coast as a Tongan side featuring a host of players contracted to Super Rugby and European teams secured a place at an eighth straight World Cup.

Hong Kong will take on Kenya, Portugal and the United States in a four-team repechage in November for the final place available in France next year. “We’ve got guys on tour who are traders, schoolteachers, PTs, doing work remotely on their laptops after training and we’re playing a World Cup-quality side,” Evans told the South China Morning Post.

“We were under the cosh a fair bit from the Tongan power and scrum but hung tough when that was a good 15-point wind in the first half. “No team is going to have a scrum that good in November. The journey to the World Cup doesn’t end today.”

Two late tries from Matt Worley added some respectability to the result and the Bedford Blues player said Hong Kong can spring a surprise in the repechage after seeing Chile defeat the United States to qualify for France. “We wanted to show we can hang in and attempt to pull off an upset,” he said.

“Why can’t that be in November? We’ve already seen Chile beat the USA so we’ll be trying.”

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