It will be great to catch up with Scott Hastings again at the Hong Kong Sevens in a month’s time. The Scot will be the last to be held at the current stadium before moving to Kai Tak Sports Park in 2025. Because Scott is always great company. Thanks to him and his brother Gavin, I had the chance to have a professional career in Scotland, where his father was born. We were both very involved with Watsonians RFC, and I think they still are, through a South African guy who was at the club called Barney Hennessy, and while I was playing for the Under-20s, his older brother was with the Sharks, they got in touch and set things up. I started meeting with my coach at the time, Cammy Mather. He then signed me and I moved to Edinburgh at the age of 20 and had a great year, winning the Scottish Cup and earning a full-time professional contract with Border Reivers.
Again, playing in the Celtic League was a great experience for me. We were by no means the most successful team and the team disbanded at the end of the season, but I had the privilege of playing alongside great players like Gregor Townsend and Ross Ford, and we won the Heineken Cup. I had a wonderful trip. When SRU decided to drop to two professional clubs, it was a difficult time for many players and some livelihoods were at stake, but I was young and focused on what was ahead. I was guessing. And for me, it was a move to London Irish.
Unfortunately, I didn’t play much for Ireland. I was a bag holder. The team was doing very well, but it was difficult for me to look into it. So when Pete Drewett from Exeter called, I didn’t hesitate. I was planning to hop on the train and have a quick look around the facility, but Pete asked me, “Did you bring your boots?” So I did some training and then got on the train. Team culture and club vision. I was drawn to it and immediately signed up.
Funny memory: Brian Rennie scoring a try for Exeter
Photo: Getty Images
We had a pretty good first season, but we didn’t achieve promotion to the Premiership, which we had hoped to achieve. We failed in one of those games against Moseley and Leeds beat us to win the title. Pete transferred at the end of the season and has since been working in Hong Kong, but I had the pleasure of catching up with him over lunch the other week. In fact, there are quite a few enclaves of former chieftains here. My first center partner, Mark Fatialofa, coaches the Valleys, Scottish scrumhalf Ian Wilson is involved with Sandy Bay and my good friend Jim Scadesbrook is the Kowloon coach. Garrick Cowley and Nacho Eros live here, as well as some old Exeter Uni players. , too.
Rob Baxter took over from Pete. And Ali Hefer came to the club at the end of my first season and really revitalized the attack. We won promotion the following season, which of course was great, but personally I was disappointed that I suffered a fractured eye socket during a team run the day before the first match and had to miss out on advancing to the finals. I had to have a titanium plate fitted. I watched in the stands and then really celebrated with the players…all four days. A few weeks later I was lucky enough to be called up to the Scotland A squad and toured Romania with them, playing against Argentina, Namibia and Georgia. I was very happy that my mother and sister came to Bucharest. Sadly, there wasn’t enough in the tank to win a full cap.
“I’m looking forward to catching up with Scott Hastings at the Hong Kong Sevens.”
I have nothing but fond memories of my time in Exeter. It was a wonderful environment. It was led by Rob and the rest of the coaches, and people like ex-Marine turned strength and conditioning coach Paddy Anson did a great job.work Ethics within the players. We were a very fit team. The big thing was that the core of the Championship winning team played in the first Premiership game against Gloucester. Fozzy (Mark Foster) scored a try against his old club and it was a really fun day.
Perhaps we had been passed over beforehand as all the other promoted teams also tended to fall back quickly, but we truly believed that the same fate would not happen to us, and We managed a few more upsets that season. Playing against big clubs and world-class players was very new for many. Rob recruited well and young players such as Henry Slade and Jack Nowell began to make progress in training. Dave Ewers was an absolute beast. I still keep in touch with a lot of the men and I’m still good friends with Shea Alcott, Nick Cestaretto and Jim Casebrook, and Gareth Steenson was my wedding guide and I also attended his wedding.
After four great years with the Chiefs, my contract was not renewed. At the end of the 2011/12 season. I thought I was finishing really strong, playing well and stringing some matches together. But when they signed Ian Witten, they kind of knew the writing was on the wall. He wasn’t a bad sign, was he?! Perhaps I wasn’t up to his standards in terms of durability and everything else, so I decided to consider my options. I was pretty keen to play in France, but at Bristol he got to talk to Liam Middleton, who was DoR, and some of the players he knew had good things to say about the environment. That upset me because I said, I wanted to help Bristol get back into the Prem, but there were quite a few stop and start times. He broke his shoulder in a preseason game, and in his first game back, his home debut, jumped up to the ball and landed awkwardly, damaging his anterior cruciate ligament. The season is over.
Liam was replaced by Andy Robinson, but he was still suffering from knee pain and was unable to show him what he was really capable of, playing only a few games in his second season. After failing a medical check, his contract was extended and he decided to move to Hong Kong in 2014 to play semi-professional rugby for Hong Kong Scottish RFC. Ten years later, I’m still here.
I then became General Manager of Hong Kong Scotland in 2015, a role I held for four years until Sam Pinder, who was in charge of Hong Kong Sevens, brought me on to work on the commercial side of his team. We had a great tournament in 2019, but as we all know, things fell apart due to the coronavirus. It’s been a tough time for the national sporting associations and events industry here, with the HKRU having to make a large number of staff redundant and us having to dig deep into our reserves. But thankfully, after 4 events were postponed and 2 events canceled, we are back in action in 2022.
When Sam took up the role at World Rugby, I took over his role and a few months later we received permission from the Hong Kong government to host Sevens again. The November event had three months of preparation and was able to be completed with social distancing measures still in place. Still, it was great to be back and I felt a great sense of relief. Without that, we would have been in a much worse position financially. Then we did it again in April 2023. So that was a real turning point for the union. And now, with the final tournament held at the Hong Kong Stadium, thousands of international visitors come to experience the event’s glorious celebration of its 48-year history.