Half-crazed by the tenth Tannoy rendition of Chumbawamba's booze anthem Tub Thumping, three Welshmen ran onto the empty rugby pitch brandishing a giant inflatable leek, only to be politely herded off by Chinese stewards. 'It seemed the only thing to do,' said Gerald. After two-and-a-half days/48 games/672 minutes of rugby and countless Heinekens in the sticky, mist-shrouded Hong Kong stadium, you could perhaps see his point. Less Chinese water torture than Hong Kong rugby torture...
Welcome to the 27th Hong Kong Rugby Sevens tournament. The West's bridgehead into China, handed back to Beijing five years ago after Britain's 99-year leasehold expired, still annually hosts a long weekend of large, sloping-foreheaded men dressed in garish shirts, barging into one another in a spirit of faux friendly rivalry - and then there are the players (not to mention innumerable lame jokes).
The leek was just an appetiser. Later, in a pre-match lull, a fat white man wearing nothing but a bright orange wig and small blue rain cape ran across the soaked grass. The Tannoy announcer was barely civil: 'Public nudity is an offence punishable with jail.' The stewards tackled him with an aplomb sorely lacking in many of the early fixtures.
Meanwhile, with Singapore and Chinese Taipei (Taiwan's Chinese monicker) playing in the first semi-final of the bowl competition (after one round the tournament splits into three), a brace of buzzards circled lower and lower, perhaps expecting one of the exhausted players to expire.
Spectators were picking over the bones of a famous brand of fried chicken, others over Australia's dismal performance against Fiji. Mexican waves, started by exuberant English fans dressed as Vikings rippled around the 38,000-seater stadium, only to peter out in the calm pools of sporting apathy that are the corporate boxes. And then there was the rugby.
It's no secret that many men prefer watching other men running around a grass field to practically anything else. If you can throw in an unlimited source of booze, the merest chance of sunshine, and the freedom granted by distance from the shackles of their daily lives, it has become apparent to the travel industry that they (along with some women) are willing to fork out large proportions of their income. Trevor Davies of Sport Abroad says its rugby tours are attracting 20 per cent more people than a few years ago. The thought of relaxing in the sun in front of a game I love, to cap off a week's holiday in an exotic location, rather appealed to me too. But, sitting in an office in London, I had seriously overestimated my passion for rugby.
For a start, the seven-a-side version is a distilled form of the standard 15-a-side game. More tries, more dashes to the line, more clean heels, less tight play, less kicks to touch, less rolling in the mud than its larger, older brother. It is the foie gras to his meat and potatoes and it's a sickly, dyspeptic diet taken day in day out. Then there's the time factor: catching a single match would be fun; three days out of a week's holiday begins to seem pathological. Finally there's the trenchant colonialism of the whole affair. After five days enjoying the spectacular hybrid of East and West that is Hong Kong, to be surrounded by thousands of white commonwealthers seemed a bit lame - I can go to Earl's Court for that.
So what is this tournament doing in Hong Kong? The genteel, amateur, Corinthian spirit of rugby seems at odds with the hustling, prideful professionalism of the Special Administrative Region (SAR), as Hong Kong is formally known. China's rugby history could be scored onto a grain of rice, while the SAR's is only slightly more nourishing.
In 1823 when young William Webb Ellis picked up a pig's bladder on the sports pitches of Rugby school and ran the oval ball game into existence, China was getting upset with British traders' aggressive marketing of opium. This attitude resulted in the first Opium War and victory spoils for Britain that included Hong Kong.
While rugby was played in the colony by the gwailos (foreigners/expats) from the late nineteenth century on, the ant-sized island was developing one of the world's 10 largest economies. Then, in 1975, as Britain began negotiating with China whether it would return Hong Kong with a neat back pass or a punt into touch, two expat businessmen shared a drink and a vision of a corporate-sponsored rugby tournament with sides from around the globe. Less than a year later, the Australian Wallaboos and Korea kicked off the inaugural seven-a-side fixture.
The Cantonese have a saying: 'A cow's mouth doesn't take a horse's head', but in Hong Kong the cow's mouth has widened in many miraculous ways to disprove the rule. A hustling bustle of money-motivated worker ants populating a high-rise Babelscape, Hong Kong's vital statistics speak for themselves: an official population of 6.8 million in an area three times the Isle of Wight. It consists of a ragged peninsula of 260 islands hanging off south central China, at the tip of which lies the urban area of Kowloon, and, a seven-minute ferry ride south across Victoria Harbour, the highly developed Hong Kong Island. The overwhelming majority of people live in these two urban areas. The official population per square mile in Kwun Tong (an area on Kowloon) is 142,649. It is estimated that if an earthquake hit the city (fear not, for this isn't a region of great seismic activity) and everyone fled into the streets, they would stand five deep (on top of each other).
Earlier in the week I was wandering the northerly streets of Kowloon, high on the dioxin-laden air and the diversity of sights: an old man with cutting-edge mobile phone in one hand and caged canary in the other; a mind-boggling tower of bendy bamboo scaffold embracing a nascent skyscraper; a raft of leathery, Peking-sauced ducks; the clack clack (and whispered betting) of a mah jong tournament. On Sundays, the streets, squares and public phones are awash with Philippina women, sitting around chatting, playing cards, phoning home: the 140,000-odd au pairs and maids taking their weekly day off en masse.
So what do the locals think about the rugby tournament? Playing football with some Cantonese kids on a concrete pitch wired off from the street, I asked them about the approaching Sevens. Would they be supporting the Hong Kong or the Chinese team? After much gesticulation from me and broken English from them it was clear they'd never even heard of the tournament.
Later in the Space Bar on Nathan Road, patrons had a similar disregard for the important sporting event taking place in their midst. The sharply dressed, late teens/early twenties Cantonese aspire to the Western culture of the twenty-first century; pop music, film, soccer and basketball. The Hong Kong Sevens team consisted mostly of Anglo-Saxons. Asking these guys about rugby seemed as anachronistic as if I'd asked them to carry my bags.
As one of the young hustlers observed: 'Sport is important to the Chinese in one particular way.' Standing at the Sha Tin racecourse watching the bets register on the digital screen provided mind-boggling confirmation of the fact. From $HK50m(£4.5m) on the first, to£12 million on the seventh and final race, the locals in the stadium were laying big big bucks on the gee-gees. The average betting turnover per race is the highest in the world. It is amazing, considering the revenues made by the Hong Kong Jockey Club, that betting (outside the two horse tracks) is illegal.
Sitting in the nosebleed heights of Hong Kong Stadium watching the final between Fiji and England, I was surrounded by gwailo teenagers gambling, boozing and smoking with the frenetic skill of those who felt confident that they'd taken the best from both cultures. As a Scotland fan I drank in the sour grapes of a Sassenach victory and thought back to an encounter earlier in the week.
The large, fat, bronzed foreigner stared down at me impassively from a great height, one hand held out in either greeting or dismissal. He was about 20 metres tall. I was standing in the shadow of the Lantau Buddha, in the relative tranquillity of one of the outlying islands. Metallic dragonflies and yellow butterflies buzzed around. Fence painters wore origami newspaper hats for sun protection. Hump-backed black cows wandered the roads with carefree abandon, occasionally chewing a greeting to the equally lazy dogs lining the road. 'I'm on holiday,' I remembered.
Factfile
The International Rugby Sevens season starts next weekend in Dubai (5-7 December). The Hong Kong Sevens 2003 runs 28-30 March.
Tom Templeton flew to Hong Kong with Cathay Pacific (020 8834 8888) and stayed at the Great Eagle Hotel, Kowloon (00 852 2375 1133). Flights from London to Hong Kong start at £554, and go up to £704 during the Sevens. Rooms at the Great Eagle start from HK$1,243 (£100).
For further information on Hong Kong and Sevens holiday packages call the Hong Kong Tourist Association (020 7533 7100).
