Rio de Janeiro – Canada won the first rugby medal awarded at the Olympics for 92 years with a 33-10 victory over Britain in the inaugural women’s sevens bronze medal match at the Rio de Janeiro Games on Monday.
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A sledge prior to this morning’s gold medal women’s sevens match has come back to bite the New Zealand side.
From the new King of the pool Mack Horton to the Australian women’s rugby seven’s team – the 2016 Rio Olympics are off to an incredible start for our green and gold competitors.
RIO DE JANEIRO New Zealand hopes of becoming the first Olympic rugby sevens champions suffered a major setback on Tuesday when they lost their opening match to Japan and Sonny Bill Williams for the tournament to an Achilles injury.
At a sun-kissed Deodoro Stadium, with massive support for the underdogs, Teruya Goto squeezed past Rieko Ioane’s tackle to dot down in the corner to open the Brave Blossoms’ account.
That was still within New Zealand’s comeback ability, but Woodman dropped the kickoff ball – “I didn’t brush (the yellow card) off as quickly as I wanted to” – giving over possession which Australia ultimately used to score from a Caslick tap-and-go, effectively sealing the gold medal at 24-5 with less than four minutes to go.
Australian coach Tim Walsh said he had been left “absolutely elated” by the performance of his team. They executed better than we did and that is why they will have the medal around their necks.
The Fijians won the opening round of the world series the last two seasons, and have won four of the last five three-day tournaments, Ryan said, suggesting he knew how to time his run.
“We’re coming here, not just to make up the numbers”. Woodman was one of several players who won the Sevens World Cup in 2013, and the New Zealand Rugby Union poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into their preparations.
It didn’t take long for the Aussies to equalize, however, and a try to Tonegato on the buzzer saw them go into the second half leading 10-5.
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A convincing 26-7 victory over Fiji in the Quarter-Final set up a clash with New Zealand, where they were defeated 25-7. Captain Scott Curry said they were guilty of making too many mistakes. “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”. You have to perform for 20 minutes and you can win it or lose it in a couple of minutes.
