• Singapore breezed through to the finals unbeaten
• Malaysia beat Singapore 17-12, with late try in the last two minutes
• Singapore looking forward to the SEA Games in December 2019

(Singapore, 11 August 2019) What excitement, what drama over the weekend in Jakarta. Attracting the crème de la crème of Southeast Asian rugby, the Asia Rugby Sevens trophy yielded a fiercely-contested battle between combative rivals. 11 teams participated in the tournament held in Senayan, Jakarta with Mongolia, Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore coming through to the semi-finals, unbeaten on the first day. In particular, Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore were convincing, breezing through the qualifying rounds.
Having carved out comfortable wins of 27-12 and 50-0 over India and Brunei, Singapore remained in contention going into the semi-finals to take on their nemesis, Thailand. SEA games rivals Thailand took Singapore to the wire in an enthralling semi-final, in which our boys edged out a 14-12 win to earn a place in the final to face Malaysia. The Malaysian team was the top seed and the team to beat en route to promotion to the next tier of the competition.
It was going to be a battle from either side of the causeway, and Singapore took the lead within the first minute with an opening try. The other came just before the halftime whistle with Malaysia trailing 14-5.
Malaysia got off to a lightning start in the second half cutting the deficit to 14-12, and with two minutes left on the clock the Malaysians justified their number one ranking. An audacious length-of-the-pitch try brought the score to 17-14 in favour of the Malaysians. Although Singapore were tenacious in trying to overturn the score line, Malaysia were the victors when the final whistle was blown.
Malaysia, being champions of the tournament will get promoted to the Asia Rugby Sevens series next year. The Singapore men’s team was hoping to emulate our women’s team, who had already earned a place in the Asia Rugby Sevens series starting end August.
SRU’s General Manager,Daniel Marc Chow said after the narrow loss, “We are disappointed that we didn’t win but extremely proud of our boys and the way they played over the weekend. We will build on these performances and continue to work hard towards SEA Games in December.”

Tournament Information
The 2018 Asia Rugby Seven Series is the 12th edition of Asia’s continental sevens tournament. The lower-tier Trophy tournament is hosted this year in Jakarta, Indonesia as a qualifier, with the top team qualifying for the main series. The top two teams what are not already core teams on the Sevens World Series (World Rugby HSBC Sevens Series) will earn qualification to the 2020 HK Sevens for a chance to earn core team status following the World Series. The Asia Rugby Sevens Trophy provides another avenue for aspiring teams to join the ranks of the very best in the Asia Rugby Sevens Series. It has become an integral part of the Asia Rugby calendar.

About Asia Rugby
Asia Rugby is the Regional Association of World Rugby, the governing body for the global Game. Asia Rugby members comprise National Governing Bodies (Unions) for Rugby. The originally named Asian Rugby Football Union (ARFU) was founded in 1968 and now has 31 member unions across the length and breadth of the continent. Participation, together with the number of competitions over the past decade, has increased significantly, with now over 30 rugby events taking place each year.

About Singapore Rugby Union
As a leading National Sports Association, Singapore Rugby Union (SRU) is a prominent and influential Union in Asia rugby and Singapore sport. The core purpose of SRU is to provide efficient governance and effective leadership for all rugby activities in Singapore. Known for business partnerships and its youth development programmes, SRU aims to raise the profile of rugby locally.

For enquiries, please contact:
Avril Sullivan – avril.sullivan@sru.org.sg | +65 9018 0859

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