Advertisement
Hong Kong Sevens 2022: have traditional villains Australia earned a little love?
- The team the Hong Kong Sevens loves to hate are for the first time arriving at the tournament as World Rugby Sevens Series champions
- ‘The crowd just absolutely launch into you and give you a spray,’ coach John Manenti says. ‘It’s such a fun part of the tone of it’
Reading Time:3 minutes
Why you can trust SCMP
Everyone loves a winner, but what happens when the winner is a team everyone loves to hate?
Advertisement
We are about to find out as Australia arrive in Hong Kong as the freshly minted World Rugby Sevens Series champions. That title – the Australians’ first – was sealed with a third-place finish at the season-ending event in Los Angeles, and the team so quickly moved on to the Rugby World Cup Sevens in South Africa that they barely had time to celebrate.
So maybe the crowd at the Cathay Pacific/HSBC Hong Kong Sevens will give the champions their due, and stand and applaud as they run out to face the home team in the last game of the first night of this year’s tournament. And, well, maybe they won’t.
Australian coach John Manenti is not convinced that they will. He knows Australia have priors in Hong Kong and have been roundly booed and even abused ever since they roughed up everyone’s favourites the Fijians way back in the 1980s. And Manenti has felt the heat first-hand.
“I was running water as an assistant coach in 2016 and I remember getting people yelling at abuse at me and then thinking, ‘You don’t even know who I am,’” Manenti said, smiling at the memory. “I thought, ‘Why am I copping a spray?’ Then it actually became quite a laugh, almost like you’re better off getting it.”
Advertisement
Advertisement