The country came to a standstill at 10am local time as the Fijian team took on Great Britain in the final.
Advertisement
The Pacific islanders will face Britain in the gold medal match later on Thursday after the team made up of English, Scottish and Welsh players beat South Africa 7-5 in the second semi-final at the Deodoro Stadium. “You have made friends around the world.you have made history.and you have inspired a new generation to play rugby”.
“We’re looking at putting a celebration together”, added the prime minister.
Over in Rio, and Fiji’s British-born coach Ben Ryan wasn’t far wrong when he said “the entire population – towns and village – will be under siege in Fiji now”.
The defining moment of the match came when Marcus Watson pulled off a great covering tackle as South African Cheslin Kolbe seemed set for a try.
Ryan acclaimed his team’s gold as just reward for a country obsessed with rugby sevens. It’s been phenomenal how they’ve performed.
“It’s a passion, it’s a national sport”.
Since the introduction of the world sevens series in 1999, however, the team have often struggled with consistency, romping through one tournament only to crash out early in the next.
“When these guys are on fire, it’s very hard to combat”, Britain captain Tom Mitchell said.
“We’ll probably wake up tomorrow, it will dawn on us – this achievement will be part of our history back home”.
Fiji scored two try tries inside the first four minutes of the contest with captain Osea Kolinisau charging through before Jerry Tuwai added another with Fiji taking a 12-0 lead after Kolinisau converted.
Five more Fijian tries followed as the crowd cheered and sung, with Britain reduced to a solitary consolation courtesy of Dan Norton. And because he didn’t want to leave anyone in the lurch, he said he’s “I’ve drawn up a calendar for the next two years for them”. Fiji targeted the “branches, not roots” of the British team to avoid being sucked into a contact game. So he took a new coaching job more than 10,000 miles away, on a South Pacific Ocean island decorated with beaches and palm trees.
“I wanted to thank the Olympic committee for including rugby sevens into the Olympics and we hope the brand of rugby we played today has justified the inclusion”, he said. “Such a special team”, Amor said.
Thursday proved a night to remember for Fiji as the tiny island nation won its first ever Olympic gold, while there was world-record breaking cycling action in the velodrome on the sixth day of the Games in Rio. Few teams, if any, can cope when the Fijians are in this kind of mood and from the start it was clear that they were going to leave everything on the field.
Advertisement
When the referee blew the final whistle to indicate the end of the game, Fijians danced on the street, hang flags from building and celebrated its first gold medal 60 years after trying at various Olympic events over the years since Melbourne hosted the Summer Games in 1956.
