England international Dan Norton could top the try-scoring charts in the HSBC Sevens World Series on Friday.
Former Bristol winger on track to make sevens history
England international Dan Norton could top the try-scoring charts in the HSBC Sevens World Series on Friday.
Norton's next and 72nd try will see him pass former captain Simon Amor into fourth place on England's all-time list behind Ben Gollings (220), Richard Haughton (106) and Rob Thirlby (101).
Five more would see the wing, who is 24 on Thursday, overtake injured New Zealander Frank Halai as the leading scorer in the World Series.
Norton aspires to lift the Hong Kong title after missing out in last season's final, saying: "I'd just like us to win regardless of anything else - I just want to win the tournament.
"It'd be a nice present on Sunday evening if we're standing on top with the cup. I can't really ask for anything more than that. We've hit a final and a semi-final here in the last two years and now we want to go one step further."
England will play Argentina, Kenya and Samoa before the knock-out stages of the three-day tournament.
Norton believes the fitness training his side have completed and their approach to the detail of winning big games will stand them in good stead heading into the competition.
"We've worked over the last four or five weeks to better our fitness levels. There's been more running, more gym work and more out-of-hours training to get those levels back up to the top," he said.
"We've maybe lacked a bit of clarity in what we're doing on the field and we're being more thorough in meetings, revising what we've learned and trying to get as much information out of each other as we can. It's about turning over every stone and making sure we are thorough in our processes.
"Regardless of who you're playing - whether it's a core team or not - we've just got to go out and execute our game plan properly and if we do that we can win. The times we've lost, we haven't stuck to that plan 100 per cent like we should have.
"Argentina got one over us in Vegas so this is a chance to turn the tables on them, although every group is going to be very hard with the set-up of the tournament. It'll certainly be good for the neutral!
"We know what we've got to do and that's to win six games if we want to win Hong Kong, regardless of who we're facing."
