New Zealand sevens specialist Eric Rush is the fourth member of the Hong Kong Rugby Football Union all-time international team, ‘The Hong Kong Magnificent Seven’.
In a glittering sevens career, Rush, alongside Fiji’s Waisale Serevi, was the face of the Hong Kong Sevens throughout the 1990s, playing in Hong Kong on an amazing 16 occasions and claiming the Cup on nearly one-third of those outings. His five tournament wins in Hong Kong include a purple patch of three straight Hong Kong Sevens titles from 1994 to 1996 as well as victories in 1989 and 2000.
He won the Leslie Williams Award for the Best & Fairest Player of the Hong Kong Sevens in 1991.
Overshadowing his nine test caps for the All Blacks and participation in nearly 30 matches with New Zealand, Eric Rush’s reputation as a rugby great is built on his career as one of the world’s foremost practitioners of modern sevens. Rush played in nearly 60 international sevens tournaments, and helped New Zealand win gold at the Commonwealth Games in 1998 and 2002 and at the 2001 Rugby World Cup Sevens.
With pace to burn, superb conditioning and unique pitch vision arising from his fifteen-aside experience as both a flanker and a wing, Rush brought an exceptional level of leadership to the New Zealand Sevens teams as a captain, helping to maintain New Zealand’s commitment to excellence through several generations of players.
Rush also distinguished himself as a member of the New Zealand Maori sides, playing in the 1988 tour of France and Argentina and in a total of 14 matches to 1991. After his move to the wing in 1992, Rush represented the New Zealand Maori on another 14 occasions including a fixture against the British & Irish Lions in 1993.
A qualified lawyer, Rush’s natural wit, intelligence and bright personality has seen him in high demand as an after-dinner speaker and in rugby circles he is nearly as well regarded for his role officiating the Hong Kong Sevens Long Lunch as for his exploits on the pitch at the Hong Kong Stadium.
Rush’s sevens fame has seen him acclaimed as an international star and over many seasons Rush has been invited to play for the British Barbarians in high profile festival games in the United Kingdom.
Rush will go down as one of the seminal players in sevens rugby.
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.
England sevens star Ben Gollings is the second member of the the HKRFU’s Magnificent 7.
The all-time leading points scorer in the HSBC Sevens World Series, Gollings’ record stands alone. An astonishing 276 of those points came from just eight appearances at the Hong Kong Sevens, earning Gollings the record as the leading points scorer in Hong Kong since the inception of the World Series in 2000.
Gollings’ Hong Kong haul came from 20 tries (tied-fifth all time in Hong Kong since the series began) and 88 conversions. He leads his next closest rival on the Hong Kong scoring table, Portugal’s Pedro Leal (224), by 52 points and outpaces third-placed Zhang (211) by 65 on Hong Kong’s leaderboard.
Gollings played on three of England’s four cup winning sides in 2002, 2004 and 2006 (England also won in 2003), and featured at the Rugby World Cup Sevens in 2005. He returned to his favourite stomping ground from 2008 to 2011 and is still a regular and popular visitor to the Sevens each year.
The Hong Kong Women’s Sevens squad was announced today. Hong Kong will face a stiff – albeit familiar, challenge after being drawn into an all-Asian pool for the Hong Kong Women’s Sevens in 2015. Hong Kong will face Asian number one China, Kazakhstan (ranked fourth behind third-placed Hong Kong) and Singapore in their opening round matches.
Although missing a few key players due to injury, head coach Anna Richards has still been able to name an experienced squad under the captaincy of Royce Chan Leong Sze, who makes her tenth appearance at the Hong Kong Women’s Sevens.
Try-scoring threats Aggie Poon Pak Yan and Natasha Olson-Thorne have both been named in the final twelve, which features two change to the squad that won the Asia-Pacific Cross-Regional Sevens in Borneo last month. The experienced Candy Cheng Tsz Ting earns her eighth Hong Kong Sevens appearance while Nam Ka Man makes her debut. In total, ten of the squad have played previously in the Women’s Sevens, with Adrienne Garvey and Nam the only debutants.
Women’s Squad:
Royce CHAN, Leong Sze (captain) #
Christy CHENG, Ka Chi (vice captain)
Candy CHENG, Tsz Ting
Adrienne GARVEY*
KWONG Sau Yan
LAI Pou Fan
NAM Ka Man*
Natasha OLSON-THORNE
Aggie POON, Pak Yan
Amelie SEURE
SHAM Wai Sum
Lindsay VARTY
Anna RICHARDS (Head Coach)
Mark KOMAR (Coach)
Dannii CHEUNG (Manager)
* Hong Kong Women’s Rugby Sevens
# 10th Hong Kong Women’s Rugby Sevens appearance in 2015
