Aden Ekanayake: 'We’re focused on winning the World Championship'

Australia Sevens’ Aden Ekanayake has said his team are not focused on the potential of dropping out of the HSBC SVNS Series.

The 21-year-old former Australia U20 international is preparing for the first leg of the HSBC SVNS World Championship in Hong Kong. Tournaments in Valladolid and Bordeaux will follow in the weeks to come.

Placed in Pool C with New Zealand, USA and Kenya, the side that finished third in the overall Series standings know they will have to dig deep to emulate their 2022 Hong Kong success.

There is now also the added threat of relegation to contend with as the bottom four teams in the standings of the World Championship will be demoted to HSBC SVNS 2.

“We’re obviously focused on winning the World Championship, which would be ideal, but we’ve touched on the fact that it’s something that can happen,” Ekanayake told rugby.com.au.

“We don’t focus on it because if you’re worried the whole time, you’re probably going to put yourself under too much pressure and fall into the trap and out of the Series.

“It certainly adds a bit of pressure with livelihoods at stake, but we try to keep the focus on our games and our performances. If we play well, it should take care of itself.”

Ahead of this weekend’s tournament Australia have been forced into a late change, with Ethan McFarland replacing Jayden Blake in the squad for Hong Kong.

This weekend’s Cathay/HSBC Hong Kong Sevens will be the 50th year the tournament has been staged.

It is due to be another festival of rugby sevens at Kai Tak Stadium as teams all look to make a good first impression in World Championship action.

“We’ve been watching plenty of tape the last couple of weeks when we found out they were in our pools because you do get accustomed to the eight teams in the comp at the moment and getting used to playing the same teams,” Ekanayake said.

“We’ve done our homework and we’ll rely on the knowledge of the experienced guys like ‘Hutch’ [Henry Hutchison] and ‘Moz’ [Maurice Longbottom] who have been around long enough to know how these teams play and upskill the rest of the boys.”