Britain narrowly avoided going the same way as New Zealand, who were victims of arguably the greatest shock in sevens history when Japan beat them 14-12, while they also lost World Cup victor Sonny Bill Williams to an Olympics-ending injury.
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“We need pressure”, says Fiji’s red-headed British coach, Ben Ryan, who left the grey skies of England three years ago to take up his new role in paradise, where he has been enjoying the pleasures – and taking note of the pitfalls – of island life. “The gap has closed considerably”.
Ollie Lindsay-Hague, who made four appearances for Harlequins last season, is also involved for Team GB in Rio. It took us a while to win a World Cup [after 1987].
As for Japan, they finished second behind Great Britain but ahead of New Zealand in Pool C, which gave them a quarter-final clash against France. Kenya are a great team so it is great to get that out of the way but we want to keep building with every game. “If we lose, we lose, if we win, we win, ‘ Lemeki said”.
“At the end of the day, you have to come away with the results”, Mitchell said after their 21-19 win over Japan.
But the day unquestionably belonged to Japan, whose star player Lemeki said of their New Zealand scalp: ” It is unbelievable.
They go on to face Argentina in the quarter-finals at 22:00 BST.
Tietjens said his team would miss Williams, a two-time World Cup champion with the All Blacks and the highest profile player in the tournament. 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.
“There’s no pressure on us, the pressure’s on the big teams, they are the ones supposed to be winning the medals, not us”.
If Team GB win their semi, what time is the final? .
Fiji saw off Brazil (40-12) and Argentina (21-14) to top Pool A, while the Blitzboks zeroed Spain (24-0) and France (26-0) to finish the day atop Pool B.
In the afternoon’s final quarterfinal, Australia and South Africa played each other for the second time in the same day.
The 60-year-old is a veteran of well over 100 worldwide sevens tournaments, steering the team to four Commonwealth Games gold medals, 11 World Series Sevens titles and two IRB Sevens World Championship titles (2001 in Argentina and 2013 in Russia), and helped launch the careers of a number of players who became very good All Blacks.
New Zealand’s Rieko Ioane reacts after his team’s loss to Fiji in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Although Australia defeated South Africa in Pool Play on Wednesday, they fell to the Springboks later in the evening.
Lemeki compared the win in Rio with Japans big victory at the 15s World Cup in England past year.
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The session begins an hour earlier with the ninth place semi-finals which see hosts Brazil tackle the United States of America and Spain meet Kenya.
