Hong Kong rugby pushes back against pandemic amid ‘new normal’
- Hong Kong rugby has been hard hit amid the pandemic and the Hong Kong Sevens has been postponed twice
- The local scene remains resilient as coaches and managers say players are still eager to return amid Covid-19
Kowloon’s Joe Barker, who will take over running the men’s team as a player-coach when the Premiership gets under way in September, said when considering the job earlier this year, Covid-19 wasn’t part of the process.
“In all honesty, none of that went through my mind,” Barker said. “This is my passion, this is what I live and breathe and what I want to do so I didn’t really think too much into that side of it.”
Barker, who came from England to Hong Kong in August of 2019 during the height of the anti-government protests, first joined the team as backs coach and was also working as a teaching assistant. He said he is looking forward to playing and coaching within the “new normal”.
“With rugby it’s been so up and down … last season we had four games, and then it stopped, and then two games, and then it stopped again, and then four weeks of training again. So that hard part has been trying to keep everybody motivated throughout all of this.”
