Opinion | Left field: Hong Kong seem fated always to be second to Japan in Asian rugby
An honourable silver medal in sevens at the Asian Games continues city’s habit of running second to their arch-rivals when it counts
So are we second best or not? The silver medals hanging around the necks of Hong Kong's players should provide the answer after the men's rugby sevens team returned from the Asian Games in Incheon. While the box was ticked and the sport's future at the Hong Kong Sports Institute has been assured – winning a medal at the Asian Games is a condition for continued financial and logistical support from the elite training academy – should we be satisfied with playing second best to Japan again?
If you are the Hong Kong Rugby Football Union, the answer is yes. Chief executive Vern Reid says "winning a silver medal is hardly second best in my view".
We have to accept the grim truth that when it really matters, Japan come up trumps
Reid goes on to say if Hong Kong had lost to Japan by a 50-point margin, it would be justified to call us second best, but not in this case. The 24-12 defeat apparently is enough reason to believe we are equal to Japan, who could have been overcome "if a couple of circumstances in the game had changed", according to Reid.
But the cold reality is that at crunch time we play second fiddle. It happened four years ago in Guangzhou. It happened last year at the Hong Kong Sevens when Japan won the qualifying competition to grab the coveted core-team berth in the 2014-15 IRB Sevens World Series. It happened 10 days ago in Incheon.
You can package it any way you like, but this does not bode well for the 2016 Rio Olympics when only one team from Asia will have the right to play in the 12-team men's competition.
Last week it was announced Hong Kong will host the Asian qualifying competition for the Olympics. We will need to win this tournament to stand a chance of going to Rio. There will be a world repêchage, of course, where the second, third and possibly fourth-placed teams will get another chance. But that road will be much tougher with the likes of Samoa, Kenya and even Australia likely to be in that competition.
