Page 50 - QARANC Vol 14 No 9 2014

48 QARANC THE GAZETTE
Hong Kong Sevens - Referee
Earlier this year I was lucky enough to have been the first English female to be invited to referee at the Hong Kong sevens competition in March, this is an international tournament which was previously part of the iRB circuit and will be used for Olympic selection in 2015. The one day event is hosted by Hong Kong Football club and the final is played live on Sky Sports between the men’s competition. This is a regular event on the rugby calendar and people travel from around the world to watch and enjoy the atmosphere and spectacle that is put on which runs over 3 to 4 days with a village created outside the main stadium for those who missed out on tickets to be involved and watch on the jumbo screens and a music event followed.
So after a long flight landing in Hong
Kong at 0900 I was delighted to find out my first task of the day was a training session in the gym with the other referees at 1200 that’s certainly one way to get the flight out of your system. It was good to see some familiar faces and meet some new ones with our small referee team being made up of an American, an Aussie, a South African and a Hong Kong referee. Gabbi and Marlize are established iRB referees however for the rest of us it was a bit of a trial by fire and selection process for those of us wanting to try and get to Rio in 2016. Following the formalities of meeting with the team managers and a referee briefing my first day in Hong Kong was concluded with the welcome meal, all of the teams organisers and officials were staying in the same hotel this was an extravagant evening of entertainment and was an excellent
start to the festival atmosphere that was being created around the rugby.
Friday morning brought an early start to get to the stadium for the first game starting at 0900, with this being a one day tournament and having 12 teams competing timings were always going to be tight. But more intriguingly than that the prospect of noodles for breakfast and what we would usually consider lunch or dinner food, however this certainly helped out later in the day. The level of rugby experience varied with senior rugby nations like Canada, France and Ireland competing with the relative new comers such as Brazil, Kazakhstan and Kenya with some fierce competition on the pitch and some great rugby on display. The home nation Hong Kong were impressive and the improvement following their movement to full time contracted