The HKRU Premiership Grand Championship Finals will pit familiar foes against each other tomorrow at Kingโs Park with menโs and womenโs league champions Societe Generale Valley facing Leighton Asia Hong Kong Cricket Club (HKCC) and CPM Gai Wu Falcons in the finals for the fourth and third straight seasons respectively.
Valleyโs Premiership teams reached their respective finals with just one loss between the two sides (for the men), and the dual league champions will look to cap dominant campaigns with league and Grand Championship doubles. Further proof of Valleyโs strength this season is that their menโs and womenโs Premiership A sides also reached their respective finals, with Valley Knights jousting with Football Club in the menโs grade and Valley Red playing Comvita City in the womenโs final.
Valley will meet Leighton Asia HKCC in a fourth consecutive Grand Final at 6:30pm. HKCC have yet to beat Valley in the final over that period, losing a thriller last season, 18-15, in a game where they were left ruing five missed kicks at goal.
Valley will be hunting for its first double since 2008 with HKCC entering the final as league champions for the past three seasons, a position they conceded to Valley earlier in the year. HKCC will be hoping that the league and grand final title-swapping trend of recent years continues tomorrow. If it does it will be a reversal on the season-long results as HKCC have yet to beat Valley this year.
HKCC were made to work hard to reach their customary spot in the final after edging Sabre Kowloon by a single point in the semis. Nonetheless, they are where they wanted to be 17 rounds of action with 80 minutes separating them from a first Grand Championship final title.
Valley coach Jack Isaac says his side is relaxed ahead of the final, but wary of the challenges posed by HKCC. โOf course weโre confident in our ability to win, but everyone seems to have us as the heavy favourites. In my experience, games with HKCC are always 50/50 affairs. It will be down to defence, discipline and accuracy for us.โ
HKCCโs Rowan Varty evades Kowloon winger Wade Roos
HKCC continue to dig deep in their roster after a rash of injuries to senior players with eight players from their Premiership squad injured in the lead-up to the Grand Final.
โItโs David versus Goliath at the moment. Valley are fully fit, while weโre down to the bones, but thereโs no pressure on us now. Itโs finals rugby and anything can happen. Weโve just got to prepare as well as we can.โ
Valley and Gai Wu set for third straight HKRU Womenโs Grand Final clash
In the womenโs competition, Valley Black will take on Gai Wu for the third successive Grand Final between the two clubs at 4:30pm. Valley ran the table for a second consecutive year this season, bringing their current winning streak to 28 matches โ the longest such streak in Hong Kong rugby history.
It is a fitting match-up as the two clubs have dominated the elite edge of womenโs rugby in recent seasons. The last six Grand Finals have seen at least one of the two sides taking part, with Valley claiming four titles to Gai Wuโs two over that period. In their head-to-heads over the past two finals, the clubs split the honours with Falcons handing Valley its last loss in domestic competition in 2014, while Valley ran out 20-10 winners over Falcons to claim the title in 2015.
Falcons enter the match as the underdogs after having dropped both of their games to Valley this season, with the first a 15-3 defeat, followed by a more comprehensive 49-12 loss in their most recent outing on the last league weekend, when Valley flanker Olivia Coady ran riot for five tries. Despite the final margin, the 12 points posted by Falcons is the most that Valley conceded over their league campaign, when they posted a staggering 565 points.
Valley is reaping the rewards of a long-term vision implemented after coach Chris Garvey arrived at the club following its 2012 Grand Championship. โWe lost 9 players after that season and there was a lot of work to do to re-build. The next season we had 25 players competing across the 15s and 10s league. I remember one Saturday when we had back-to-back games and had to finish a 10s match with seven players on the pitch, pulling girls off so we could start a 15s game on the next pitch with 12 players.
โBut we gave ourselves three years to re-build with a focus on sustainable growth. We focused on our infrastructure as if we got that right, the results should take care of themselves. We were able to get good coaches and recruit some strong players not just from overseas, but also from local universities and schools. Now weโre at the point where there are only three or four players running out that arenโt playing for Hong Kong or eligible to play for Hong Kong.
โWe have two full squads this season and our seconds went from winning only one match last year to reaching the Grand Championship final tomorrow,โ Garvey adds.
Falcons coach Lai Yiu Pang is angling to have his side in just that position: โLast weekโs win over Tigers gave us a lot of confidence and weโre picking up momentum late in the year. All the pressure is on Valley and weโre optimistic for tomorrow.โ
Lai knows that defence is the key to Gai Wuโs championship hopes, saying: โDefence needs to be our primary focus. We need to put Valley under heavy pressure and that starts when they have the ball.โ
Tomorrowโs Premiership finals join 14 other league deciders as a compelling HKRU domestic season draws to a close.
HKRU General Manager of Performance Rugby Dai Rees, commented on this yearโs Premiership campaigns, saying: โBoth leagues have been really interesting. I think itโs been the most unpredictable, competitive and exciting season we have had for many years. Despite Valley running away with the league in both competitions, it hasnโt been as clear-cut as some of the results would indicate. Valley won several menโs Premiership games by just a few points and there were three or four matches that could easily have gone against them. The fact that they gutted those games out shows that their biggest advantage is their strength in depth, and they won a lot of games in the final ten minutes.
Rees added that, โThe play-offs showed how competitive the clubs were outside of the Valley chase. Kowloon pushed HKCC to the last minute of their semi, despite finishing bottom of the league, while Tigers in the womenโs competition managed to unseat Gai Wu in the league and nearly made it through to the final. Those results bode well for the continued development of the leagues and while both Valley sides would be the clear favourites going in, HKCC and Gai Wu have everything to play for tomorrow.โ
Words/Photos: Hong Kong Rugby Union
