“If you’re not up for it on the day, you’ll get beaten by any team”.
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Japan shocked world champions New Zealand on a dramatic and compelling opening day of the Olympic Games men’s rugby sevens competition.
Kolinisau scored a crucial try in Fiji’s 12-7 win over New Zealand on Wednesday in a quarterfinal match between the two teams widely expected to be playing for gold.
Pool A winners Fiji await the All Blacks Sevens in the last eight after they joined Great Britain as the only unbeaten teams with a 24-19 victory over the United States of America at the Deodoro Stadium, a missed conversion attempt from out wide by Madison Hughes the difference between a quarter-final place and ninth place semi-final for his side.
T he first Olympic rugby gold medal in 92 years has gone to a group of Australian women that includes a mechanic, an elite former sprinter and a 21-year-old newcomer who has traveled around Rio de Janeiro carrying an inflatable kangaroo.
New Zealand Rugby officially added the All Blacks moniker to the Sevens and New Zealand Maori teams several years ago when American insurance giants AIG became major sponsors of the organisation.
(Thur) Tutton, women’s 200m breaststroke semis.
Great Britain Rugby 7s team captain Tom Mitchell has said the Rio Olympics has been a “very special opportunity” for his team.
“A lot of other teams have put a lot of emphasis on sevens, they’ve centralised, they actually gone in and built their depth in a lot of areas and in some of smaller countries the national players play 15s and sevens so they’re pretty good players”. Sevens is one of the games where a lot can happen in 14 minutes and the reason it is in the Olympics is because it is so exciting.
Great Britain head coach Simon Amor said: “It’s the first day at the Olympics for everyone”.
The favourites outscored the Kiwis by four tries to three, two of them crucially coming either side of half-time when star New Zealand winger Portia Woodman was in the sin bin for a deliberate knock-on. “I thought we’d be lucky to make the quarters, let alone the semis”, he said.
“It’s unbelievable”, said Japan back Lomano Lemeki.
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Australia’s men’s team, the Wallabies, have struggled against New Zealand’s famous All Blacks for more than a decade in the traditional 15-a-side game. “We always go out to deliver good performances and while Japan performance wasn’t as a good as we’d have liked, we’ll take the two wins, rest up tonight and go into tomorrow looking to deliver better performances and get the wins”.
