One touch was all it took. One touch to blast England’s World Cup Sevens campaign into life. One touch and barely ten yards of acceleration to break Hong Kong’s challenge. One touch, he hopes, to resurrect his career in the England senior side. Tom Varndell knows how to make an impact.

The Leicester wing made a happy return to the country where he shone on his England debut as a teenager. Varndell scored ten tries here in the 2005 Dubai Sevens and he has two more after coming on to steer England to a 42-5 opening win against Hong Kong. The margin looks comfortable but England had trailed 5-0 with a minute remaining in the first half before Tom Biggs got the first of their six tries.

The men in white had looked as flat and free of ideas as the senior team of late. They even picked up one of those must-have England rugby fashion accessories, a yellow card, when Kevin Barrett halted a four-on-one Hong Kong attack illegally but understandably. Hong Kong took advantage of the extra man to take the lead.

But the game turned on its head at the beginning of the second period when Varndell was given the ball just outside the England 22 and put his foot down. A second try at the end of the half was finished almost at walking pace, but by then Hong Kong had been put to the sword, with Ben Gollings jinking through the defence twice and Josh Drauniniu shrugging off two tacklers to open his account.

“All I said when I came on at half-time was that they should give me the ball early,” Varndell said. “It’s a bit unusual for me.” The last remark was a dig at Leicester, whose aversion to set Varndell’s talents free, or even to pick him, has rankled with the player.

If Leicester have doubts about their man, two former World Cup Sevens winners who were in Dubai yesterday were united in praise of him. “I don’t know why people don’t believe in him,” Lawrence Dallaglio, a winner with England in 1993, said. “He’s a fantastic player. What an athlete.”

Jonah Lomu, who won with New Zealand in 2001, endorsed the view of Gordon Tietjens, the New Zealand coach, that Varndell is the fastest player on the planet. “He needs confidence more than anything else,” Lomu said. “If he gets the ball, he should put the hammer down, and go for it. Not many will catch him.”

Dallaglio has no doubt that playing sevens was the making of his career. “If only our 15-a-side team were as fit as our sevens side. The physicality of the sport impresses me but it has also become a more tactical game now. Above all it has been a huge part of my life and was fundamental to my success,” he said. “I’d have everyone in the England team apart from the front five playing sevens at some part of his career. It teaches you to tackle. A player is most uncomfortable in sevens when there is space either side of him. Tackling becomes paramount.”

Ben Ryan, the England head coach, had predicted that Hong Kong would hit them hard and fast. “It will be like the first five minutes of the Varsity Match — lots of energy and activity but little proper skills on display,” Ryan, a former Cambridge scrum half, said. But England ignored the warning and started nervously. “They did all sorts of things that I told them not to,” Ryan said. “They were too side-on and did not look after the ball. It was a bit flat and 12 months ago I don’t think we would have raised our game, but the players knew what they were doing wrong and they got going in the second half.”

England’s World Cup continues today with pool matches against Tunisia and Kenya. The latter are dark horses here and although a narrow defeat to them may be good enough for England to progress to the quarter-finals, Ryan isn’t looking beyond Tunisia. “Australia and New Zealand slipped up in the 2007 World Cup because they assumed they were already in the final,” he said. “We won’t make that mistake.”