KUALA LUMPUR: A depleted national rugby sevens squad mustered a sixth-place finish overall in the men's event at the Sri Lanka leg of the Asian Rugby Sevens Series today.
Nik Safuan Ismade Nik Man's squad suffered losses to Thailand (21-15) and Japan (54-5) before bouncing back with a 31-12 win over Uzbekistan in the group stage to advance to the quarter-finals.
Their cup campaign, however, came to an end after succumbing to a heavy 78-0 defeat against heavyweights Hong Kong in the last eight.
The squad bounced back with a 42-17 win over South Korea in their first classification match before losing 33-5 to hosts Sri Lanka in their fifth-place decider.
Nik knew the squad would have their work cut out for them in Colombo.
The squad finished fifth at the Aichi-Nagoya Asian Games a fortnight ago, equalling their best-ever finish from Indonesia 2018, but it came at a cost as numerous players suffered heavy knocks and picked up injuries during the tournament.
"From the start we knew we had a problem as a number of our core players were not able to come here," said Nik.
"So we are fielding mostly young players between 18 to 19 here to give them competition exposure at this level.
"We don't feel frustrated to lose against Japan and Thailand. We know where we are at.
"Our target was to beat Uzbekistan and hopefully reach the quarter-finals and we have achieved that."
The national women's squad finished ninth overall in Colombo after beating Sri Lanka (10-5) and Uzbekistan (20-12) in their classification matches.
The team lost all three of their group matches against Hong Kong (55-0), Thailand (39-0) and Singapore (19-0).
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