“It was the most colourful day of sport that I have ever seen,” he said of the first Sevens. “One that put Hong Kong on the international sporting map.”

The venue was Hong Kong Football Club in Happy Valley – its pitch situated across the road from its present site, with one main stand along its northern touchline and a clubhouse behind the eastern try line.

It was HK$1,950 per adult cheaper then, but one thing is recognisable today: a win for New Zealand, or rather Cantabrians. Two titles for Fiji, one for Australia and another for Fiji followed as the tournament became an annual fixture.

The only pause on Antipodean and Pacific dominance came in 1981, when the Barbarians, including England’s Andy Ripley and Clive Woodward, defied an Australian side stacked with internationals. Captain Ripley was chaired from the field by spectators, ending a more homespun phase before the Sevens gained a grander look.

Hong Kong Stadium, winning Wallabies

By 1982, the tournament was popular enough to fill the 28,000 capacity of what is now called Hong Kong Stadium. Australia beat the Scottish Border Club 18-14 to claim a crown they retained 12 months on, inspired by Ella brothers Mark and Glen along with David Campese.

Fiji set a new benchmark in 1984, routing New Zealand 26-0 in a stunning display of speed and flair. It was the first victory to nil in a Hong Kong final – repeated only once since, when Fiji shut out South Africa 33 years later.

With Campese to the fore, the Wallabies were back on top in 1985, holding off British invitation side the Public School Wanderers, before New Zealand began a period of supremacy in 1986, beating French Barbarians. Even if some of the names were old-school, the tournament was setting new standards – an unofficial World Cup before there was one.

Bigger, better and Serevi

A Hong Kong legend emerged in 1989 when Waisale Serevi made his debut and was player of the tournament. He had to wait a year for Fiji to prevail, which they did in some style against New Zealand as Tomasi Cama completed what many described as the best sevens try ever scored. That was the first of three consecutive Fiji titles – a feat New Zealand then Fiji again were to emulate that decade.

In 1993, a newly enlarged Hong Kong Stadium staged the Sevens. Enlarged but not yet finished, with cushions instead of seats and 33,000 of the eventual 40,000 capacity in place.

Also in 1993, but staged in Scotland, the birthplace of sevens, came an official sevens World Cup. It moved to Hong Kong, the game’s modern spiritual home, for its second edition in 1997, with Serevi’s Fiji fitting champions.

Samoa, England disrupt – then Fiji, NZ rule

Finally excelling at sevens at the behest of Woodward, by then his country’s 15-a-side coach, England earned their first Hong Kong triumph in 2002 before making it a treble in 2003 and 2004, then adding another in 2006.

Samoa had already made their move, stepping out of Pacific rivals Fiji’s shadow in 1993, and they added further Hong Kong successes in 2007 and 2010.

In between, the World Cup had returned to the city in 2005, with the same outcome as the first. Serevi, now a veteran of 16 appearances in Hong Kong, again pulled the strings, producing a sudden-death try to beat England in the semi-finals then seeing off New Zealand in the final.

Hong Kong celebrated its 40th Sevens in 2015. Appropriately, the final saw Fiji, who have won it the most times, beating New Zealand, who have the second-most wins.

Three years on, the Fijians became the first to lift the Cup four years on the bounce, and they made it five in 2019.

There will be another first this year, if an odd and less welcome one, as Hong Kong stages its first tournament of the pandemic.

It will certainly be a unique chapter in its colourful history, featuring vaccine checks and coronavirus tests, social distancing and masks, but it will at least take place for the first time in three-and-a-half years. The hope will be that the first Covid Sevens is also the last of that era, while re-establishing the event for many years to come.