At one end of the spectrum, one of New Zealand’s oldest and most accomplished Olympians – Sir Mark Todd – is competing in his eighth games – a national record.
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Fiji, who have won the last two world sevens series, are favourites to top Pool A, while a New Zealand side featuring twice 15-man World Cup victor Sonny Bill Williams will be expected to do the same in Pool C.
The ground proved challenging for the Wallabies in classic English conditions and was positioned alongside the 100-metre Olympic pool, with only a group of nets in place to catch flyaway balls.
Recently engaged and with a baby on the way in September, Dan Bibby’s summer would be capped off by a gold medal for Team GB in the rugby sevens at Rio 2016.
The sport returns to the Olympic program later this week for the first time since 1924, though this marks the debut of the sevens version (as opposed to 15-a-side) and the debut for women.
“Sevens is a amusing game, you can lose a game on the bounce of a ball or a referee decision”.
Canada opens the Olympic sevens rugby tournament against Japan on Saturday. However, New Zealand coach Sean Horan has re-iterated time and again that the World Series wasn’t his team’s priorities for the 2015-16 season and for this reason Tim Walsh, Horan’s contemporary, believes the “Sevens Sisters” from across the ditch go in as competition front-runners.
“We gave it a bit of time”. The country has won the last two World Rugby Sevens Series titles. The Fijians enter the tournament as the back-to-back HSBC Sevens World Series winners, but could be pushed by South Africa’s Blitzbokke or the always-formidable All Blacks from New Zealand.
On the prospect of facing Brazil in their opening Pool C game, Joyce said: “We’re just going to take it like it’s any other team, go out there fighting”.
“I rang my fiancée as soon as I found out, she had already backed me getting selected because when I got home there were congratulations banners outside”.
“I don’t see one as competition to the other, I see the opposite and that they will actually enhance the game and expand the game”. They’re more confident now and have some strong players making them the toughest team Canada will face in its pool. “You’re up against the best and you’ve got to be the best to go out and get that gold medal”, Tietjens said.
Beaumont said he hoped the “unprecedented global audience” for rugby provided by the Olympics would lead to a surge in youngsters, particularly girls, wanting to take up the game. Since moving from England in 2013, Ryan has harnessed the passion Fijians have for their kind of football, reinforcing the connections between the game and the people in a Pacific island nation which has become too familiar with seeing its best rugby talent move overseas seeking greater opportunities.
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The courageous new dawn of rugby sevens at the Olympic Games kicks off Saturday with women’s teams from trans-Tasman rivals Australia and New Zealand fancied to be battling it out with Canada and Britain for gold. The women have a chance for a medal, and the men have a chance for a medal, so I think there’s a great chance that there’ll be a lot of rugby in our living rooms over a six day period. “We want to enjoy these Games, and I am sure the athletes will do everything they can to be at the top of their game”.
