Jevon Groves is “very keen” to help Hong Kong achieve their seventh Olympic qualification, but the head coach said he will review his future following the 2028 Games cycle.
The city team played a bloody friendly against Fiji at the Football Club on Wednesday as part of their preparations for the Melrose Claymores, which will also feature Japan and China, at the Cathay/HSBC Hong Kong Sevens next week.
It is indicative of the difficult nature of Groves’ job that the 15-year-old’s commitments have ruled out key trio Callum McCullough, Harry Sayers and Jack Combes, while star Max Denmark will also miss the Kai Tak Stadium tournament following “knee issue” surgery.
Groves, 38, hopes to have a perfect finish to October’s Asian Games, where “your career over four years is decided in one pool game, semi-final and final”.
After winning the gold medal at the 2018 and 2023 Games, the joy soon changed as Hong Kong suffered crushing defeats in the 2020 and 2024 Olympic qualifiers.
Welshman Groves admitted that “a lot of things” would determine how long he would stay on the job, including his wife and three school-age children, but from a sporting perspective, he wanted to look no further than the Los Angeles Olympics.
