Bittersweet for skipper as Hong Kong proves just out of reach

Men’s 7s skipper Tom Healy admitted he had mixed feelings despite his team’s excellent performances in Cayman.

While reaching the CACSO Games in the first year it has featured rugby is a wonderful feat, the team were just one win away from qualifying for the prestigious Hong Kong 7s in March.

Bermuda lost in extra time to Trinidad & Tobago in the quarter-final with victory so close.

They even had the bitter pill of watching a conversion ruled out after it appeared to go over the posts. Healy told the Bermuda Sun the match was a ‘bridge too far’ but refused to blame the disputed decision in a game that came down to ‘a matter of inches’.

“We let in three tries over the course of the game so you could pick out lots of things that cost us.”

However, there were plenty of positives to take from the seventh-place  finish and upsetting much-fancied Jamaica in the group stages.

“If you’d have said at the start we’d have come seventh and qualified for CACSO I would have bitten your hand off — but the beauty of 7s is the little fish can sometimes beat the big fish.

“When you come as close to achieving something we thought was unattainable, in retrospect, it’s a huge disappointment. Something like that is beyond what we could have expected.”

He added: “But we have really exceeded expectations and it’s really good for our confidence and for our 7s programme.”