Australia just made another Hong Kong Sevens SF. Now they must beat the ‘perfect program’ to reach the final
Hong Kong: Australia will take on Argentina in the semi-finals of the Hong Kong Sevens after smashing Great Britain in a near-perfect performance on Saturday.
The 2022 Hong Kong Sevens champions smoked GB 34-5 after a brilliant first-half, where the Australians starved their opponents of the ball and made hay themselves.
Co-captain Henry Paterson was the hero, scoring a hat-trick to seal their berth in the final four, where they will take on reigning World Series champions Argentina on Sunday (5pm AEDT) after the South Americans were too good for Ireland, winning 22-14.
Henry Paterson had a day out on Saturday, starring against Uruguay and Great Britain to lead Australia into the semi-finals of the Hong Kong Sevens at Kai Tak Stadium on March 29, 2025. (Photo by Thomas Tang/Eurasia Sport Images/Getty Images)
Paterson was one of four try scorers for Australia, with Henry Hutchison, James Turner and Maurice Longbottom also touching down in the clinical performance.
“You want to win footy games, but we just want to be playing better game on game, so we weren’t really happy with how we performed game one and had a few things to fix and luckily we’ve just been building and be able to not only identify what needs to be fixed but go out there and sort of execute it,” the physical Paterson said.
“We know we’re deadly when we’ve got the ball, so we just want to put the defence under pressure, make it work, dictate the terms of the game, how we want to play it, so that was the big thing.”
Australia will now take on their nemesis Argentina, who smashed Liam Barry’s side 41-5 in the Perth Sevens final in late January.
Paterson was missing on that summer’s day, but without the scars of that defeat, the hard-running forward said he was confident his side’s best could match anyone in the world.
“We have the confidence and the belief that we can beat anyone,” he said.
“I think that’s what we’re trying to drill into these young boys, that when we are playing our best footy, we are world class and we’re, we’re a top 2, top 4 team, we should be playing in those last games on Sunday.”
Words are one thing, actions are another though.
So how does Australia beat the reigning world champions?
“They’re pretty much running the perfect sevens program at the moment,” said Barry, the former All Black turned coach.
“They’ve got size, they’ve got physicality, they’ve got speed, they’ve been together four years, pretty good program, and half of them are world-class, so yeah, it’s going to be a tough ask, so we’ll have to work that out.
“You’ve got to hold the ball. The game’s about holding possession, as you said, around kick-offs and restarts.
“It’s going and getting the ball back for yourself again and holding and being patient with the ball and doing smart things, taking your opportunities when they’re there.
“The boys have just got stuck into the work. We missed opportunities against New Zealand, and they learned really quickly, and we had to beat Uruguay. There was no bones about it. We had to beat them this morning.
“And then to win a knockout game like that, the boys are in good space because they’re putting massive amounts of effort in, so we just go about our work.
“We know what they do. We know their dangers. We know their threats. They beat us up in Perth through holding possession for long periods of time and us not being able to cope with it.”
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