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Asia Rugby Championship: Hong Kong hammering of Malaysia still leaves plenty of questions ahead of South Korea clash
- Home side run in 13 tries in 88-9 demolition of limited opponents at Hong Kong Football Club
- South Korea will pose far tougher test in game next weekend that will decide ARC title
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Why you can trust SCMP
It is difficult to tell how much Hong Kong will have learned from their utter demolition of Malaysia in the Asia Rugby Championship over the weekend.
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Results such as this, where one side runs in 13 tries and scores at more than a point a minute in an 88-9 hammering of limited opposition, rarely answer questions about a team’s standing.
Are Hong Kong making strides towards being better prepared for the next World Cup qualifying campaign, or still the side so cruelly exposed in the repechage as they strove to reach this year’s edition?
The truth probably lies somewhere in between, especially given the number of new faces in Saturday’s squad, and a more accurate barometer of their ability will come against South Korea in six days’ time.
As expected, those two teams will battle it out once again to decide who wins the ARC, and a year on from a nerve-wracking win in Incheon, one thing that can be said for Hong Kong is that they are in a far better condition physically, with a season of league competition and nine weeks’ training under their belts.
After the game, head coach Lewis Evans said the performance, rather than the result, had been the most important thing, but acknowledged there were occasions when “against Korea we might be tested a bit more”.
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