The Sri Lanka Men’s Sevens Rugby Team will look to produce an improved performance in 2023 and will target a top three finish at the 19th Asian Games in Hangzhou, China later this year.
The Asian Games Sevens Rugby Tournament, scheduled for September this year will be the biggest event for the Sri Lankan Tuskers, who will also feature in the regular Asian Sevens Rugby Series in 2023.
The Sri Lanka Sevens Rugby Team had a huge amount of experience in 2022, where they had the opportunity of playing against some of the world’s top-ranked teams during the Birmingham Commonwealth Games held in England in July/August.
They were up against New Zealand, England, and Samoa in the group stage and eventually, had to be content with the 14th place in the tournament while recording only a solitary win against Zambia.
Despite those setbacks, the Sri Lankan players had a good exposure at the highest level and were able to leave a mark while scoring 16 tries from their six outings while exhibiting a great amount of skill and technique before losing mainly due to their opponents’ physical dominance.
Thereafter, the Sri Lanka Sevens Rugby Team narrowly missed out a medal in the second leg of the Asian Sevens Series in South Korea where they went down to the Philippines (7-24) in the playoff final.
With the 2022/23 Inter-Club rugby season now in its early stage and with the Inter-Club Sevens Tournament scheduled for the second week of May, Sri Lanka Rugby will have enough time to select the best possible line-up in preparation for the Asian Games.
In fact, Sri Lanka had a nasty experience with their very short preparations for the recent Asian Sevens Series third leg in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), where they ended up in a disappointing seventh place – an all-time low for the island nation. Even then, the Tuskers will take heart from their performance at the 2018 Asian Games in Jakarta, Indonesia where they missed out the Bronze Medal before finishing fourth overall behind Japan, Hong Kong and South Korea.
Sri Lanka finished second in Group ‘C’ while overcoming the UAE (68-0) and Afghanistan (36-0) before going down to Group winners South Korea (26-31). In the quarter-finals, Sri Lanka defeated China (17-12) but lost to Japan (10-12) in the semi-finals before they surrendered to South Korea (14-36) in the Bronze Medal match.
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