{"id":42132,"date":"2025-08-04T05:45:08","date_gmt":"2025-08-04T05:45:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/42132\/"},"modified":"2025-08-04T05:45:08","modified_gmt":"2025-08-04T05:45:08","slug":"rugby-world-cup-2027-lewis-evans-helps-hong-kong-china-qualify","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/42132\/","title":{"rendered":"Rugby World Cup 2027: Lewis Evans helps Hong Kong China qualify"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The 38-year-old from Newport could be hatching plans for South Africa, New Zealand, France, England, Ireland or even Wales as Hong Kong, currently ranked 23rd in the world, aim to earn respect Down Under.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;We aren&#8217;t going to win the World Cup, but look at what Portugal did last time, we want to be the darlings of the tournament,&#8221; said Evans, referring to the European minnows who stunned Fiji and drew with Georgia.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Winning one game will be a challenge and so would be staying competitive given that we are going up against top teams.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Facing South Africa, Ireland, New Zealand, England would be very tough, but if you can&#8217;t build yourself up for that\u2026<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Give us another year with a full-time programme and we will show that we&#8217;ve got good players who deserve to go up against quality teams.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Expansion of the World Cup is important to give emerging nations the chance to be on that big stage trying to compete.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The 38-year-old from Newport could be hatching plans for South Africa, New Zealand, France, England, Ireland or even&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":42133,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,760,85],"class_list":["post-42132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-rugby","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42132"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42132\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42133"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}