The tattoos inscribed on the arms of Au King-to will be joined by a design celebrating her Cathay/HSBC Hong Kong Sevens debut, after she overcame self-doubt to earn a place in the city’s team this week.

On Sunday, the 29-year-old was named in a 12-strong women’s squad that covers the full range of experience, from a 48th cap for the evergreen Nam Ka-man to 19-year-old Haruka Uematsu, who will make her Hong Kong debut in her side’s Melrose Claymores campaign.

There were plenty of fresh faces in the men’s team too, with six members of that group having won fewer than six caps, while Julien Bourron, Matthew Rickard, Blake Elliot and Johnny Oyana will run out in front of a home sevens crowd for the first time on Friday.

A member of the women’s 15s side, Au made her international bow in the shortened version in Hong Kong’s bronze medal Asia series leg in Hangzhou last September.

“I’m not normally a confident person but I keep working on myself to see how far I can go,” said Au, who abides by the personal mantra “attitude determines altitude”.

The scrum-half leaned on advice from Pun Wai-yan and Stephanie Chan Chor-ki, her teammates at Gai Wu, where Au moved in 2019 after nine years with SCAA Causeway Bay, as she refused to give up on a sevens call in the second half of her career.