RIO DE JANEIRO Sonny Bill Williams, the highest profile player in the rugby sevens tournament, was ruled out of the rest of the Olympics after suffering an Achilles injury in New Zealand’s opening match on Tuesday.
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“He suffered a partial Achilles rupture of the left Achilles tendon”, read a statement.
Williams has now been replaced by travelling reserve Sione Molia.
After a shock defeat by Japan and the loss of Sonny Bill Williams to injury the All Black Sevens have got their Rio campaign back on track with a 28-5 hammering of Kenya.
Meanwhile, the Kiwis sevens team managed to bounce back from their 14-12 defeat to Japan to beat Kenya.
The result echoed Japan’s upset of South Africa at last year’s Rugby World Cup under the coaching of Eddie Jones. The main characteristic of rugby is that players can only pass the ball backward with their hands, but they can also kick it forward. “You’ve got to think that a minnow team can come here and beat a team that’s supposed to be a gold medal contender”.
“Knowing the work that these girls have put in to make it that far, the things that they’ve sacrificed, it’s just unreal how hard they’ve had to work to get to that level and I’m just proud of them”, Mackenzie said.
Akira Ioane powered through some poor defense to give New Zealand a 12-7 lead not long after but the usually clinical team in black couldn’t close out, and conceded a late try to Komeli Soejima which Katsuyuki Sakai converted for the win.
Danny Barrett exploited the shorthanded situation to score a try and conversion, putting the USA ahead 14-12 with just minutes left to play before Matias Moroni pulled out the 17-12 triumph for Argentina.
The partisan crowd thought there might be another upset on the cards when lowly Brazil took the lead against two-time defending World Sevens Series champions Fiji through Felipe Claro.
Japan nearly pulled off their second upset of the day but a missed conversion after fulltime cost them a draw with GB, who won 21-19.
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A thrilling opening round of fixtures also saw a highly-fancied United States team lose 17-14 to Argentina, while Australia came unstuck 31-14 against France. “But we look at every player as a good player on the New Zealand team”, he said.
