Hong Kong Sevens 2024: could France superstar Antoine Dupont add X-factor to city in April?
- Dupont will make his sevens debut for France this weekend after switching from 15-a-side to aim for Olympic glory in Paris
- It means the last edition of the Hong Kong tournament before its move to a new venue at Kai Tak may feature the dazzling scrum-half
Antoine Dupont is set to begin a detour into rugby sevens that the world’s outstanding scrum-half hopes will lead him to this year’s Olympics – and it could see him play in Hong Kong along the way.
Dupont has been named in the France squad for this weekend’s Vancouver SVNS tournament as he switches from 15-a-side rugby to target success at the Games on home turf in Paris. He has skipped this season’s Six Nations championship, leaving his teammates toiling in his absence.
After his expected debut in Canada, the HSBC SVNS – the revamped version of the World Rugby Sevens Series – moves on to Los Angeles on March 1 to 3.
The season’s next stop after that is the Cathay/HSBC Hong Kong Sevens, from April 5 to 7. It is expected to be the last time the iconic event is held at Hong Kong Stadium before a planned move in 2025 to the 50,000-seater stadium currently nearing completion at the city’s new Kai Tak Sports Park.
Welcoming the star quality of Dupont would add sheen to the jewel in Hong Kong’s sporting crown as it continues to bounce back after the pandemic years. Sevens rugby has been short of household names since Fiji’s Waisale Serevi ruled the roost in the city, featuring for a final time in 2007 as player-coach.
Michael Hooper, of Australia, is another revered 15-a-side player to have joined his country’s tilt at Olympic glory, which promises to inject further interest in the Hong Kong leg and could pit him against Dupont.
France, too, is in need of Dupont’s X-factor. Its sevens team’s record in Olympic rugby is nothing to boast about: a seventh-place finish in Rio in 2016 was followed by a failure to even qualify for the Tokyo Games in 2021. The French finished sixth in the last Rugby World Cup Sevens in 2022.
Sevens is a different kettle of fish from 15s, but former England and Great Britain sevens captain Tom Mitchell believes Dupont is well capable of adapting.
“He is probably going to go better than any other convert that we have ever seen before,” Mitchell told the BBC.
“Someone like Dupont, who has a high rugby IQ, will not struggle to pick it up, but there are different scenarios that he will encounter on a sevens field that he won’t in 15s.
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“The mental demands of a sevens tournament are different. Whether you’ve got two or three games a day, you have to get up for a game and simmer back down before getting up for another one, on multiple occasions, spread across two days.
“That is a real challenge. In 15s it is just one 80-minute game.”
In Vancouver, France will face the United States, Samoa and Australia in the group phase.
Additional reporting by Reuters
