Hong Kong 7s coach’s Olympics desire, first targets Kai Tak, Asian Games double

Jevon Groves has a “burning desire” to help Hong Kong make their Olympic sevens qualifying breakthrough, but the head coach said he would review his future following the 2028 Games cycle.

The city team contested a full-blooded friendly training match against Fiji at Football Club on Wednesday as part of their preparations for the exhibition Melrose Claymores tournament, which will also feature Japan and China, at next week’s Cathay/HSBC Hong Kong Sevens.

It is illustrative of the increasingly complex nature of Groves’ job that 15s commitments have ruled out key trio Callum McCullough, Harry Sayers and Jack Combes, while star man Max Denmark will also be absent from the Kai Tak Stadium competition following surgery on a “chronic knee issue”.

Groves, 38, expects to have a full complement for October’s Asian Games, where “your work over four years is judged on one hard pool game, a semi-final and a final”.

After winning Games gold in 2018 and 2023, elation soon gave way to desolation as Hong Kong suffered gut-wrenching defeats in qualifiers for the 2020 and 2024 Olympics.

Welshman Groves acknowledged “a lot of factors” would determine how long he stays in the job, among them his wife and three school-age children, but from a purely sporting perspective, he did not want to look beyond the Los Angeles Olympics quest.

Click here to read article