Australia's Ben Dalton in action with South Africa's Ricardo Duarttee during the Hong Kong Sevens at Kai Tak Sports Park, in Hong Kong on Mar. 28.Tyrone Siu/Reuters
Jocelyn Barrieau always dreamed of playing in Hong Kong.
Competing in rugby sevens – the faster, more dynamic version of the traditional game – Ms. Barrieau “desperately wanted” to take the pitch at Hong Kong Stadium, the legendary venue for the biggest, most raucous event on the global sevens tour.
“As a player, it was a tournament I looked at with awe for many years, but never made it,” Ms. Barrieau, now head coach of the Canadian women’s sevens side, told The Globe and Mail soon after the team landed in Hong Kong for this year’s competition.
Although her team won’t play in the Hong Kong Stadium itself, Ms. Barrieau has led her players to Hong Kong at an historical moment for the sevens tournament: on Friday they were the first team to take the pitch at the brand new, 50,000-seat Kai Tak Stadium, beating Japan 24-17.
Located on the site of Hong Kong’s former iconic airport – with its memorable skimming-the-rooftops approach – Kai Tak Sports Park has been six years in the making, at a cost of $30-billion Hong Kong dollars, or the equivalent of $5.5-billion. Along with the main stadium, it includes the 10,000-seat Kai Tak Arena, a fan village and a 700,000 square-foot shopping mall.
But as Kai Tak sits on the opposite side of Hong Kong Harbour from the tournament’s former home of more than four decades, and further from the night-life areas fans have traditionally piled into following a boozy day of rugby, there had been concerns the stadium would fail to bring the party with it.
Tournament organizers were adamant once fans saw the new venue – a massive upgrade on the increasingly decrepit Hong Kong Stadium – they’d be won over. That confidence appeared to have paid off Friday, as crowds packed into Kai Tak from the early morning, among the more than 130,000 expected across the weekend.
Felipe Alfaro, a Canadian visiting from Beijing for the tournament, said he was “very impressed” by the new stadium.
“I played rugby growing up,” he said. “And being in Asia, the opportunity to come to Hong Kong Sevens, that’s something you hear about all the time.”
Mr. Alfaro said he relished the opportunity to cheer on Canada, adding it was “good to see women’s rugby being developed.”
Kai Tak is about a lot more than rugby, it’s the key prong in a plan by the Hong Kong government – still smarting from losing Taylor Swift concerts to rival Singapore – to reinvent the city as Asia’s premier destination for mega events, and bring in a much-needed flood of tourists for the city’s flagging economy.
That plan was launched to great fanfare last year, and officials say more than 550,000 tourists visited Hong Kong for mega events in the first six months of 2024. But that claim was greeted with skepticism after it was revealed dozens of the more than one hundred fixtures on a government list were hyper-specific trade shows, while others were one-off art exhibits, hardly most people’s idea of “mega.”
With the opening of Kai Tak Stadium this month, Hong Kong has a chance to win over the naysayers. Coldplay are due to play the venue in April, while Taiwanese Mandopop megastar Jay Chou is booked for three nights in June – but it’s Hong Kong Sevens that everyone in the city is looking to as the key test.
Bryan Rennie, the tournament’s executive director, never had any doubts about the move, pointing out that in the 1980s, similar fears about the death of Sevens were voiced when the tournament shifted from the old football club to Hong Kong Stadium, now seen as synonymous with Sevens.
“You can’t help but be impressed as soon as you walk into Kai Tak. It’s world class, it’s absolutely incredible, it’s what Hong Kong needs,” Mr. Rennie told The Globe.
And while it might be slightly further out from the city centre, “anywhere else, if you’re looking at a half-hour commute to get to a world-class facility, you’re absolutely laughing,” he said.
Nor will fans be hurting for entertainment and refreshment at Kai Tak, which features what organizers have dubbed “Asia’s longest bar,” stretching the 100 metres between the stadium’s north and south stands, as well as a fan village, and bars and restaurants in nearby malls.
Tiffany Kwan, a Trinidadian-Hong Konger who went to university in Toronto, compared Kai Tak’s facilities favourably to the Rogers Centre, saying there seemed to be more food and drink options around.
“I really got into rugby this year,” she said. “This is my first time experiencing Sevens, it’s even better than I expected.”
Friday was a mixed day for Canada, following up their win over Japan with a loss to Australia. The team is hoping for a better performance in Hong Kong than the Vancouver Sevens, where they earned a disappointing seventh-place finish, albeit one capped with a 27-10 win over the United States that was greeted wildly by fans, as any victory over the U.S. is at the moment.
Ms. Barrieau said she wished the Canadian men’s side, relegated last year to the second-tier Challenger series, were also competing in Hong Kong, but said there was no additional stress for the women being the only Canadians at the tournament.
“We don’t feel extra pressure, we feel extra honoured to represent our country,” she said. “There’s a lot going on politically all over the world right now, and we’re proud Canadians, and we’re proud of our values and proud of how we show up for each other.”