Andy Capostagno : Rugby
Des McGahan said: “The Hong Kong Sevens is bulletproof,” and the Irishman who has looked after the international media contingent for years may well be right. The Asian stock markets crashed last year and one of the victims was a loan company which had taken over the title sponsorship for the Sevens from Cathay Pacific and Hong Kong Bank.
Credit Suisse, First Boston stepped into the breach at the last moment and the Sevens was not only bank-rolled, it was able to offer US$500E000 in prize money, something that had never before been associated with the greatest and most endearingly amateur of all rugby festivals.
The British home unions declined the invitation to send a team at all. They had the Five Nations Championship to worry about and were apparently oblivious to the fact that there are over 200E000 active rugby players in Britain and you only need 10 to assemble a Sevens squad.
The Super 12 deprived South Africa, New Zealand, Australia, Tonga and Samoa of their best players, but to their eternal credit all of those unions found the wherewithal (and 10 players) to send a side.
Since China regained Hong Kong from Britain last year, the ex-pats have been leaving Hong Kong in droves in a version of the South African “Chicken Run”. British travel agents returned 7 500 tickets to the Hong Kong Rugby Football Union and yet 76E000 people watched this year’s event and between them consumed 160 000 litres of beer on the terraces of one of the world’s great stadiums. So maybe the Sevens is bulletproof after all.
A crowd can make or break an event and the patrons of the South Stand at Hong Kong Stadium deserved a medal each. They dressed up, they stood up, they drank up and they applauded every little piece of endeavour displayed by an underdog. They gave David Campese’s Australians their traditional welcome – a loud chorus of boos – and, somewhat bewilderingly, installed the French team at the head of their hate list.
“If you all hate the French stand up,” they sang throughout South Africa’s gripping quarter final with the Tricolors. To a man and woman they stood up and at half time they danced to the newly adopted worldwide sports anthem, Chumbawumba’s Tubthumping.
Now, you may think you’ve heard “I get knocked down, but I get up again” once too often because of its association with the Super 12, but on Saturday at the Sevens it was played before, during and after every game, and there were 24 of them. I now wake up at night with the song echoing through my skull and at this distance from Hong Kong I am now certifiably suffering from Tubthumping withdrawal symptoms.
You can just imagine what certain of the world’s unions think of Chumbawumba. In those unions there is a deeply held belief that Sevens rugby is some sort of bastard child who should be hidden away in case he wakes up granddad. Poppycock. If you have never seen Waisale Serevi play Sevens you cannot fully appreciate what makes rugby such a fabulous game. It is true that not everyone can appreciate the genius of a Pablo Picasso, but Serevi is like Diego Maradonna, a genius for the people.
Les Cusworth, a former England flyhalf and assistant coach put it in a nut-shell. “Sevens is about power, pace, tactics and handling skills. The reason England are so reluctant to play Sevens is that we haven’t got any players like that.”
Fiji have got lots. So have South Africa. It was a delightful and thought-provoking surprise to see, upon arrival at Hong Kong airport, that this year’s pin-up, the man on every poster and the cover of the tournament programme was not Serevi, or Jonah Lomu, or Christian Cullen, but Joost van der Westhuizen.
Without Van der Westhuizen and the likes of Andr Joubert, Andr Venter and Stephen Brink a scratch Springbok line-up did incredibly well to reach the semi-finals. But Van der Westhuizen should have been in Hong Kong. It would have been the perfect run out for him after a long injury lay-off. Then again, he may have decided that Sevens is too rough. After all, the South African casualties were Chester Williams (knee), Russell Winter (broken nose) and Graeme Bouwer (fractured vertebra).
Of the three, Bouwer was the most serious and will be out for three months. He arrived at the airport on Monday with his neck in a brace, but far more concerned about the safety of his newly bought Big Bertha driver.
To their credit, South African Airways upgraded the invalid to first class. Now if they could only sort out their anti-social Voyager air miles system I might be able to write nice things about them.
The worst injury was not Bouwer’s, however. This one occurred off the field. All Black captain Justin Marshall had snapped an Achilles tendon in the opening Super 12 game of Canterbury’s season. Doctors put his leg in a cast and gave him four months off. Undaunted, Marshall hobbled in on crutches to join the TV commentary team. On the first day of the Sevens he ducked out of the box for a leak, put one crutch on a roll of plastic tape and went flying. He stretched ligaments in his knee and will now be out of the game for six months.
Maybe Van der Westhuizen was right to stay at home. Sevens is a dangerous game.