Women's rugby team ready to tackle a world of opportunity

Reports early last month that foundations run by mobile payments app Alipay and two Alibaba co-founders would give 1 billion yuan ($144 million) to the Chinese women's soccer team over 10 years inspired a trip away from Beijing at the weekend.

That's because another Chinese women's team - the one that plays rugby - was taking on Kazakhstan in Qian'an, in Tangshan, Hebei province, for the right to contest next year's Asian championship with Japan and Hong Kong.

The link is that World Rugby, the body that runs the sport, admitted recently that a three-year-old deal that would have seen Alisports pump $100 million into rugby's development in China - also over a decade - had foundered.