“The Greatest Show,” laughs Max Woodward, captain of the Hong Kong China rugby sevens team. “That’s all we listened to before the last tournament.”
It’s not quite the machismo locker room tune one might imagine the men’s team listen to when getting pumped up before a match, but it offers a great insight into the culture of this team.
“For us, it’s all about sing-along songs,” Chloe Chan of the women’s Hong Kong China rugby sevens team says. “One that sticks out in my mind is Love Story by Taylor Swift. We put it on and everyone just goes crazy. It brings us together as a team before a match.”
Playing for Hong Kong means everything to these players. They’ve grown up attending the iconic Cathay/HSBC Hong Kong Sevens tournament , and getting to put on the team jersey – a special edition in celebration of the tournament’s 30th anniversary this year – is an honour.
“It’s about inspiring the next generation,” says Cado Lee, this year’s featured player on the tournament’s poster. “Rugby isn’t generally a sport played in local Hong Kong schools, so I hope seeing us play at a higher level will encourage more people involved in the sport.”
There’s just six weeks until the next Cathay/HSBC Hong Kong Sevens tournament on the day of meeting the players. And while the teams’ playlists are yet to be confirmed, their training schedule has kicked up a gear.
Over at the Hong Kong Sports Institute in Fo Tan, the teams train together four days a week. They start their day with a one-hour weights session (the men at 7:30am, the women at 8:30am) before heading to the pitch, where they sandwich two skills- or team-based training sessions around lunch. The former involves running drills on specific details of the game such as passing, kicking, meeting and stopping defenders one-on-one, while the latter focuses on improving the team’s fluidity.
There are mobility and stretching sessions to aid the players’ recovery, and each rugby training session is also filmed so that the players can look at any areas flagged by the coaches for improvement. Later, when the team begin to taper ahead of the tournament, they will run analysis on the teams they’re playing in the pool stages.
“It’s a team sport,” Lee explains. “You have to learn to work together by understanding and helping each other.”
“It’s important we’re all on the same wavelength,” Woodward agrees. “And these micro skills and details inform how successful we are as a team in a match environment.”
Being a professional rugby player doesn’t stop when you leave training, though. In fact, the contact hours are fairly minimal in comparison to the amount of effort the players put into being the best athletes they can be off the pitch. They must eat well, sleep well and look after their mental health, all the while balancing the weight of representing Hong Kong and being role models for the next generation of rugby players.
We can learn a lot from these players. Athleticism and discipline, certainly, but beyond this, composure.
“When you have a two-day tournament of back-to-back games, you have to learn from your mistakes quickly,” Chan explains. “We have 10-15 minutes to cool down after a match, then maybe an hour before the next one. We have to park our feelings and turn our disappointment into motivation.”
And with just six other people on the team and all that space on the rugby pitch, dealing with mistakes is a part of the game, Woodward explains. “You have to leave your ego out of it as much as possible... let it go and do what you need to do next.”
So, what motivates these players? Why do they choose to push their bodies to the limit day in and day out? No, it’s not the vacation days they get to enjoy after a big tournament (though they already have those planned – Lee will be heading to Japan, Woodward to Stockholm, and Chan to Boston a little later in the year). It’s having the privilege to travel the world for their job; playing against some of the world’s greatest teams, including Fiji, New Zealand and Australia, in tournaments such as the HSBC SVNS Series and the Asian Games . Though, they emphasise, nothing can match playing in front of a home crowd at the Cathay/HSBC Hong Kong Sevens tournament.
“It’s unlike anywhere else we play,” says Lee. “It’s just crazy. You go out there and find that extra 10 per cent from the energy of the crowd. The mistakes don’t matter as much; you know you can go again – that's how we won the shield last year.”
For Chan, last year’s event was particularly special, as it was the first time the women’s tournament was hosted alongside the men’s – a significant step towards gender equality in the sport.
“Rugby has changed massively since I was young,” she says. “In school, there weren’t any professional rugby development programmes. Now, there are U14, U16, and U18 national programmes as well as talent identification pathways.”
But there’s still work to be done.
“Even now, there still aren’t a huge number of full-time female professional rugby players,” she says. “I hope that if we get more results, we’ll get more funding, more resources, and there’ll be more opportunities for the next generation of women’s team players.”
The players reflect on their greatest achievements: for Chan, it was winning bronze at the Asian Games in 2023; for Lee, it was becoming back-to-back gold medal winners at the Asian Games in 2023; and for Woodward, it was beating the likes of Canada and Kenya to win the shield in front of a home crowd at last year’s Cathay/HSBC Hong Kong Sevens tournament.
The ultimate goal?
“To be an Olympian,” says Woodward resolutely. Across from him, Lee and Chan nod in agreement. And with a unity and determination like theirs, we certainly wouldn't bet against them.
Don’t miss the Hong Kong China Rugby Sevens players in action at the Cathay/HSBC Hong Kong Sevens tournament taking place 5 - 7 April at Hong Kong stadium. Flying in for the event? Witness the action from the front row with our event ticket + airfare package. Learn more here.