Malaysia relegated from Asia Sevens top tier

winning gold for the first time at the Sea Games last year and finishing a respectable fifth at the Indonesia Asian Games recently, the national rugby sevens squad were brought down to earth yesterday.

Malaysia were relegated from the Asian Sevens Series top tier for the first time since the competition was introduced in 2009 after the team finished sixth in the final leg in Sri Lanka. The result saw them end the season in last place from the eight teams competing.

The national squad had finished last (eighth) in both the first and second round held in Hong Kong and South Korea last month. Malaysia will subsequently play in the second tier Asia Rugby Sevens Trophy competition next year.

Malaysia Rugby (MR) honorary secretary Jamaluddin Salim is resigned to the fact that the national squad will have to work their way back up to the championships’ top tier next year.

“Our intent this season was to use the Asian Sevens Series as a platform for us to rebuild our team for the long run with the 2022 Asian Games (Hangzhou) being our goal,” Jamaluddin said. “Obviously, we did not expect that we would be relegated, this is something we just have to accept.

“We had been using many young, less experienced players for each leg. For this leg in Sri Lanka we used eight new players and only four players from the team that played at the Indonesia Asian Games.

“We admit that our result in the first leg (Hong Kong) was bad but we managed some good results in the second (South Korea) and third (Sri Lanka) legs.”

The national team lost to Japan (61-0) and Philippines (24-19) but managed to beat South Korea 24-10 in the group stage in Colombo. They then defeated Taiwan 19-12 in the plate semi-final but were edged by China 24-21 in the fifth place decider.