Bigger is not always better, last weekend’s Beach 5’s were devoid of people and atmosphere while swamped with corporate branding and data-mining promo girls demanding you sign-up for this or that.
Sadly the focus of profit over product meant that on Sunday afternoon beyond the teams and their friends cheering themselves on the event was empty apart from a bank of photographers taking pictures of the beach rugby.
You have to wonder who the Dodgeball people upset, they were stuck out-of-sight on the far-right of the beach behind one of the half empty stands at the end of the rugby field. A shame because they were one of the only sports where the teams dressed up and got into the feel of having fun – yet no-one could see costumes or their games.
The netball women were having lots of fiercely competitive matches, but with the ‘courts’ swung 90 degrees to run end to end instead of side to side as in previous years it was harder to watch multiple games at the same time and teams ended up only watching their game rather than being able to see other play at the same time.
Beach rugby was a fierce and competitive as ever, but the beach football was just boring – probably because the players lacked the skills to keep the ball in the air and tried to play ‘grass’ football style which just left the ball stuck in the sand and groans from the couple of people watching.
In past years teams had their own open-sided tents which worked as not only as places for the teams to relax and leave stuff but also as mini-social centers where friends would gather, talk, eat, drink… These helped set the friendly, social and fun feeling of the whole event. There were none this year, replaced with more sponsors booths, and the atmosphere was… well, sadly there wasn’t any.
The enthusiasm and sporting competitiveness remain, yet the fun and frivolity that made the Beach 5’s so enjoyable in previous years has been subsumed beneath the organisers greed to monetise and profit from the event.
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One of the most dangerous attacking fullbacks in modern rugby history, New Zealand’s Christian Cullen, has been named as the third player in the ‘The Hong Kong Magnificent Seven’ – Hong Kong Rugby Football Union’s (HKRFU) top seven international players to have taken the pitch at the hallowed Hong Kong Stadium in So Kon Po over the past four decades.
Widely acknowledged as one of the most dangerous fullbacks of the modern era, Cullen burst onto the international scene after his appearance in Hong Kong in 1995. After playing only one match in the previous year’s tournament, Cullen replaced the injured Adrian Cashmore in 1996.
He grasped the opportunity with both hands, scoring an astonishing 18 tries over the weekend and claiming the 1996 Leslie Williams Award for the Best & Fairest player.
“It’s a great honour to be included in the list of the greatest players to appear at the Hong Kong Sevens in the past 40 years – so many fantastic rugby players have played here, and for many like myself it was the start of an international career.
“The 1996 tournament will always hold special memories for me, an epic Cup Final against Fiji and of course winning the Leslie Williams Trophy. I always love coming back to Hong Kong, and I am looking forward to joining the celebrations at the end of March,” said Cullen from New Zealand.
Cullen’s Hong Kong exploits led to his All Blacks debut later in the same year – aged 20 – and reinforced his sevens sobriquet as the Paekakariki Express.He went on to score a hat-trick in his test debut against Samoa and collected four tries against Scotland in his second test. The first steps in a glittering career that would see him become New Zealand’s most capped fullback and scorer of a then record 46 test tries for his country.
Returning to the Sevens fold in 1998, Cullen played a pivotal role in helping New Zealand win the gold medal at the 1998 Commonwealth Games in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Cullen is the first player selected that predates the inception of World Rugby’s (formerly the IRB) Sevens World Series in 2000.
