Great Britain’s women made it three wins out of three in the pool stages of the hockey competition with a hard-fought 3-2 victory over Argentina, which booked their place in the quarter-finals with two games to spare.
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The attempt missed, sending the game to sudden death extra time, and Britain had the first chance to clinch it, with a long-range penalty into the breeze that came back against the post.
Putney’s Dan Bibby scored a dramatic extra-time try to send Great Britain into the semi-finals of the rugby sevens in Rio.
They will now face South Africa in Thursday’s semi-final.
The win marked a fantastic day for Team GB as they earlier claimed an exciting 21-19 win over New Zealand in their final group match to remain unbeaten through the tournament.
He admitted afterwards that he thought Britain’s run in the competition might have been coming to an end before he struck to sink Argentina. “I was just thinking ‘don’t drop it, don’t drop it'”.
Starting as fourth favourites to be crowned the first Olympic rugby sevens champions, Watson and company’s opening display will have informed their rivals that they mean business in Brazil. I have played (sevens) three or four years, and I have never been in a 0-0 draw at full-time.
“Fair play to Argentina”. They stuck in it and worked us.
“We just kept our composure and ended up getting that crucial score so I’m very proud of the boys”.
“We have only been together ten weeks and we fought hard for each other in those final few minutes”.
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“But we don’t want to put it on that – we could easily have won that game [against Great Britain] and against Japan too, but at the time we were not good enough”, he said. Something even more special will be required to beat a strong South African side, who comfortably saw off Australia 22-5, but Davies remains optimistic: “It hasn’t been pretty all week but we’re winning and we’ve come here for one thing”.
