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Japan retained the Asia Women’s Rugby Championship title easily beating Hong Kong 60-19 at Kings Park to complete a two game sweep. The home side made too many individual errors and gifted points to the Sakura with missed tackles galore.
Hong Kong coach Jo Hull tried hard to put a positive spin on her side’s last competitive match before the Women’s World Cup in Dublin next month. “It was another disappointing result, and obviously we aren’t happy with that, but there was some positives compared to last week’s loss in Japan,” said Hull.
“Our defence was good for parts of the game, as was our commitment and physicality in the contact area. Our performance at the breakdown was good and I think we improved in the set piece and were carrying the ball a bit better than last week.”
“At times we were building good momentum in our attack, but there were some real individual errors that cost us quite dearly. We are disappointed, but at the same time we needed that game,because the next time we play it will be against Canada at the World Cup,” added Hull.
Japan centre Riho Kurogi opened the scoring, converting her own try as visitor’s size and speed came to the fore. Further tries to fullback Ai Tasaka, second rower Aoi Mimura and Captain Seina Saito pushed the score out to 24-0 after 30 minutes.
One-on-one tackling is still a massive problem area for Hong Kong with players outright missing tackles or just not being strong enough in the tackle to bring the player down. There was an improvement on last week at the breakdown, but this was largely achieved by having more players in and around the breakdown – which left space out wide which Japan consistently exploited.
The home team struggled to gel on attack in the opening stages with the interchange between scrumhalf Ho Mak-yee and fly-half Rose Hopewell-Fong an issue early on. Consistently though Hong Kong contrived to put themselves under pressure. All too often with the ball around the half-way line and the backs angled deep. The passing was slow, to players who were static and within seconds from looking to be on the attack the ball was back inside the HK twenty-two and having to be kicked away…
Captain Chow Mei-nam put Hong Kong on the board in the 30th minute, finishing off a solid patch of play by crashing over the line from second phase ball, after Hong Kong won an attacking line-out on Japan’s five-metres. Winger Aggie Poon Pak-yan added a difficult conversion from along the right touchline, 24-7.
But Hong Kong failed to push on from their score, defending poorly to allow Japan to add another try shortly before half-time, 31-7.
In the second half, scrumhalf Sham Wai-sum came on to good effect, helping to inject some fluidity into the attack. Winger Chong Ka-yan capped that early momentum by opening up the Japanese defence in the 42nd minute to score the host’s second try which Hopewell-Fong’s converted, 31-14.
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Tries to Takano and winger Honoka Tsutsumi pushed the score along to 43-14, effectively ending the contest. Although Maki Takano’s 56th minute yellow card for repeated infringement allowed the veteran Sham to exploit the extra space as she darted over for a try in the right corner in the 58th minute. Poon missed the touchline conversion, leaving Hong Kong trailing 38-19.
Japan confirmed their superiority with tries to Sachiko Kato, Yumeno Noda and Yuki Oyokawa in the final 20 minutes to secure a comfortable victory 60-19, and claim a second straight Asian title.
The loss left Hull with much to think about ahead of next month’s World Cup. “Full credit to Japan, they played very well and are coming along nicely. They are always clinical but today they were very accurate and played at good pace. I think they will do well at the World Cup,and we hope they do, as we are all representing Asia at the end of the day.”
“For us, we have a good idea of our squad selection for the World Cup and today and last week was about getting those players some game time.”
Hull singled out two up and coming young players in 21-year old flanker Agnes Chan Tsz-ching and 18-year old centre Kelsie Bouttle. “Agnes played well, as did Kelsie. That was the second cap for both of them and I think we have a couple of exciting young players coming through there,” said Hull.
“We’ve identified what is working well and what isn’t, and we aren’t going to change what we are doing. We will keep emphasizing the things that are important to us. We’ve been working hard on our game and our fitness and now we need to start transferring that to actual matches.”
“Over the next few weeks, we just need to try and improve in those little areas that are holding us back. We just need to keep believing in ourselves and keep working on what we can control,” said Hull.
Hong Kong are pooled with Canada, runners-up at the last World Cup, as well as four-time champions New Zealand and Wales in the Women’s Rugby Cup which starts in Dublin, Ireland on the 9 August, 2017.
Additional reporting and images: HKRugby