‘Rugby is changing lives in Asia,’ says maker of documentary inspired by visit to China
- Hamish Kenny has made a film that tells how the sport is growing across the continent and helping communities
- He quit his job to travel after his rugby coach died during the Covid-19 pandemic, and hopes to continue his mentor’s legacy
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Inspired by a life-changing visit to China, Hamish Kenny, from the UK, has created a documentary shedding light on how rugby is changing lives in Asia.
Kenny felt well placed to make his film, having had his own life transformed by the oval-ball game. He picked it up through a well-respected coach and fell in love with it instantly, so much so that he swapped a data engineering job to become a rugby blogger with almost a quarter of a million followers.
Along the way, Kenny tells the Post, he learned rugby had become the fastest-growing sport in Asia and began to document inspiring stories of the positive impact it was having on communities.
“I love rugby,” the 24-year-old said. “I want to grow the sport in Asia because of how much it has helped me and how much I think it can help other people.”
After a visit to the Chinese capital Beijing, he decided to dive deeper.
“I and my cameraman went from Beijing to Xian to Zhangjiajie to the Floating Mountains and Shenzhen,” he said. “We visited rugby clubs all the way.
“Rugby in China is attracting a lot of curiosity but still has a long way to go to fully develop. It would be great if rugby was encouraged and played more in schools in China.”
A self-proclaimed “naughty kid” who flirted several times with expulsion from school in Bristol, Kenny picked up rugby after Ross Reeves, a local coach, told him to “stop wasting your life and get back on track”.
“I started playing religiously,” he said. “I would play every single day and it taught me the value of hard work, discipline and teamwork, and it gave me a real community.”
He says he ran rugby-themed Facebook pages aged 14 that grew to 1.5m followers in total, only for his mum to have him get rid of them for neglecting his studies.
Kenny knuckled down, picking up Master’s degrees in Mathematics and Spanish – he speaks seven languages in all – before becoming a data engineering consultant in London.
Tragic news about his old rugby coach in 2020 jolted him out of his corporate career. Reeves had died of a heart attack.
“He was walking up a hill for his daily hike in our town and I had seen him only days ago,” Kenny said. “It was a shock. He was a really fit guy.
“We couldn’t attend his funeral [because of Covid], couldn’t celebrate his life.”
After stints in the Netherlands, Morocco, Croatia, Italy and Spain, Kenny quit his job and threw his life savings into following his passion: rugby. He then bought a one-way ticket to Beijing.
From China, he went to Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippines and Cambodia, where rugby has “had a very big impact”.
“There were massive problems,” he said. “Kids and families lived, grew up on and ate from the dump site. There was this one girl called Keo Soknov, she was rescued by a French NGO called PSE [Pour un Sourire d’Enfant].
“They started teaching her sports and giving her an education. She ended up falling in love with rugby and today is the captain of the Cambodia women’s national team.
“Soknov now teaches rugby to other kids with disabilities and others from the dump site, helping them to get a better life.”
Kenny’s documentary is in post-production, with expectations to finish editing in three months before going to distributors and broadcasters including the BBC, Netflix, ESPN, Amazon and Prime.
Meanwhile, he hopes to carry on the legacy of his late coach.
Do not be surprised to see him in Laos, Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Iran or Afghanistan – “anywhere that’s got rugby”.
