HKRU Premiership Game of the Week: Natixis Hong Kong Football Club vs Kowloon RFC

Watch live as Natixis Hong Kong Football Club play Kowloon RFC in the HKRU RugbyPass.com Men’s Premiership Round 10. Kickoff 7:30pm HKT, Thursday December 15.

The blockbuster top-of-the-table clash between Societe Generale Valley and Bloomberg HK Scottish at Happy Valley headlines the final RugbyPass.com Men’s Premiership round of 2016.

All matches take place on Thursday, with a rampant Kowloon travelling to Football Club to play Natixis HKFC at 7.30pm for the RugbyPass.com Game of the Week. Herbert Smith Freehills HKCC clash with Borrelli Walsh USRC Tigers at King’s Park, also at 7.30pm.

The Valley-Scottish match kicks off at 8.00pm and will decide who sits top after two-thirds of the league rounds are completed, although Valley coach Andrew Kelly is not worried about the overall finishing order just yet.

“It’s still early days in the league so we are not really thinking about that, we are thinking more about the performance on Thursday night,” he said.

“What’s important for us is not giving up points so easily, we were 20 points to three down against Cricket Club at one stage and all the teams in the league now are pretty good so we can’t go around coughing up that amount of points and expect to win games.”

Scottish surged to the top of the table on the back of five straight wins before last week’s loss to Kowloon.

With the likes of Conor Hartley and Kane Boucaut leading the way, it is a force to be reckoned with and Kelly knows it.

“They’ve been quite good, they have got a good physical pack and they can also move the ball around so we are ready for a pretty tough battle,” he said.

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HKFC takes some new-found form into its tough clash with Kowloon after ending a run of three matches without a win with a convincing victory over Tigers.

Kowloon have strung together four wins on the trot after winning only one of its first five and HKFC coach Phil Bailey knows his side will have to find another gear – or two – to deliver the goods against the competition’s form side.

“We put together a 45-50-minute period against Tigers where we played some really good footy,” Bailey said.

“We did some really good things but there are still plenty of areas where we need to improve going forward. Against Kowloon it’s the breakdown, the tackle area. They’re very dominant, very efficient in there. They compete for everything. They can turn your best quick ball into a snail-pace ball.”

Bailey knows how important it is for his side to put in another good performance with only five preliminary matches remaining after the break, but is also hoping the break will serve as a welcome rest for his tired squad.

“It’s huge for us, purely because of where we are on the table,” he said.

“We’re sitting two [wins] behind Kowloon so it’d be good to go into the Christmas break with a win if possible. We’re a bit banged up, we’ve got a couple of guys with bangs and bruises who will be touch-and-go all the way into Thursday. The break can’t come quick enough for us, we need some healthy bodies.”

HKCC will be desperate for a win against Tigers after three losses on the trot, while a loss for Tigers will make their task of getting off the bottom of the table almost impossible.

HKCC are due some payback after fighting losses to Valley and Kowloon, but coach Kevin West has his work cut out with the likes of captain Liam Slatem, second-rower Paul Dywer and centre Fapene Popoalii all missing, among plenty of others.

“We were somewhat decimated with injuries prior to last week [against Valley], and six more injuries [from the Valley game] has narrowed that down even further,” West said.

“We have a total of something like 18 or 19 out of our 32 man squad, which obviously narrows things. But it is a great opportunity for the rest of the players to pull together. We have been hunting around to put a team together and people have put their hand up, so we will go in and try and unite and get a performance happening.”

Bottom-placed Tigers will sense an opportunity to put an end to a winless run that stretches back to round three in early October and West is not reading anything into their ladder position.

“It will be a tough physical encounter,” he said.

“I don’t think their results are reflective of either their performances or the quality of what they have so I know they’ll be desperate to put that right. They are pretty ruthless around the breakdown, pretty direct. They have something like six or seven Hong Kong sevens players who will be involved, so there is a fair bit of rugby in them as well.”