Hubris [ˈhjuːbrɪs] (n) - see Chinese women's rugby

A couple of weeks ago China Daily - the main official news source in China - published a long piece about their women's rugby sevens team. One of the IRB's hand-picked eight teams for Dubai, China are probably the team the rest of the world knows least about - so this article, written shortly after their win in the Shanghai Sevens, was an interesting insight into the Asian champions and their leading player, Fan Wenjuan.  It also showed how seriously China is taking women's sevens - an article of this length would not appear about a sport where the country had no serious ambitions.

The style of article was, however, full of self-congratulations. "Catch us if you can" the headline shouted. "The Chinese women are miles ahead of their regional rivals" it went on to say "and have the potential to make some serious waves in Rio de Janeiro".

However, this article - appearing as it did after only a four-team invitational tournament - rather overlooked China's performance in the last major tournament, the Asia Games, where they lost in the final to Kazakhstan. It was also a bit of a hostage to fortune - and, in their very first tournament, the "regional rivals" have bitten back.

The Asia-Pacific Sevens bring together some of the best teams in the two regions. Champions Kazakhstan were absent, as were Pacific Games champions Fiji, but the eight team that did line up on Friday included Pacific Games finalists Samoa, China, Hong Kong and last year's runner-up, Papua New Guinea.

China won their group but - for a team "miles ahead" of their rivals - less convincingly than might have been expected, only superior skills with the boot giving them wins against Tonga and Papua. However, fairly comfortable wins over Singapore and Hong Kong saw them through to the final - against Papua this morning. And the news came through an hour or so ago that they had lost - 24-10, so not even that close.

What do we conclude from this? First - be careful what you write about how wonderful your team is as it can come back to haunt you very quickly! But more seriously, it seems to show a growing strength in Pacific women's rugby (at least at sevens) - which is significant as its a region totally ignored by the IRB in its women's sevens policy so far. Papua and Samoa did very well this weekend and showed that they are a match for Asia's "best" - but there is one team that neither side was a match for last month and that team was Fiji. Four weeks ago Fiji's women beat Papua 26-0 and Samoa 43-7 - what would they do to China? Or anyone else if they were able to go to Dubai?