Hong Kong stamps their class at Under-19 Asian Rugby Championship

By Shamseer Jaleel

The Hong Kong junior national team won their fourth successive Asia Rugby Under-19 Championship beating Malaysia 67-10 at the UPM Sports Centre in Kuala Lumpur on the weekend. Earlier in the tournament, Hong Kong beat Taipei 54-8 and saw off Sri Lanka 61-0.

This win sends Hong Kong to the 2017 World Rugby Junior Trophy in Uruguay 2017. Last year too, they represented Asia in Zimbabwe. The eight-team competition will include two Asian entrants for the first time since 2014 when Japan won the tournament, which was hosted in Hong Kong. Japan was relegated from the World Rugby Under-20 Championship this year. Namibia, Chile, and Fiji have also qualified for the tournament in Montevideo next August.

Taipei finished as the runners-up, while Sri Lanka, who had an intense build-up to the competition and were widely tipped as the top contenders, struggled to a third-place finish but retained their spot in the top four in 2017. They only managed to beat hosts Malaysia 27-21 before going down to Taipei 31-25 in a tense game where the latter scored in injury time to pull off a dramatic win, Malaysia who were placed fourth in the tournament will be demoted to Division I in 2017.