He ended a six-year stint at the helm of England’s sevens team amid frustration at “over-complication”, despite leading it to a first Rugby World Cup Sevens final in 20 years, and has no intention of allowing clutter to derail Fiji’s Rio campaign.
Advertisement
Rugby is returning to the Olympics for the first time in 92 years, bringing the ruck, the maul and the hooker back into the lexicon of the Summer Games.
They are the ones that have got to do the business on the pitch so to me to dictate to them the entire time which they will learn nothing so to see them come through has been the biggest gains we have got in the last couple of weeks.
Lloyd Burnard is Sport24’s correspondent in Rio de Janeiro for the duration of the 2016 Olympics.
And the people have high expectations.
Fiji has never won an Olympic medal in any sport, but that could change in 2016.
So close: Hayne missed out on Rio.
“I’ve been to five Commonwealth Games and to come to the Olympics is certainly something special. Hundreds have lined the training pitch to watch us”.
While Lomu has been synonymous with the game since his explosion onto the scene in 1995, it is former Argentina scrum-half Pichot who is now a key protagonist in driving rugby forward.
Williams has enjoyed a successful career in rugby union, helping the All Blacks to back-to-back Rugby World Cup victories in 2011 and 2015.
Regardless of who walks away with the medals, though, the biggest winners in Rio should be World Rugby, for whom the Olympics is a gilt-edged opportunity to spread the game beyond the handful of nations that constitute its heartland.
“Women’s rugby participation in particular has grown from 10 percent of the (rugby-playing) population to over 30 percent”.
Both the men’s and women’s Americans teams qualified for the Olympics, and both are ranked about in the middle of the pack. The following month in Hong Kong, the Fijians won again to all but secure the world championship.
“Winning the world series last season was a really massive one”, Kolinisau said.
“We took some great (lessons). and grown”. “Villagers wanting to thank the team for what they’ve done”.
In the other quarterfinals, Britain will play Fiji, which placed second in Pool A and closed with a 36-0 win over Colombia, and Canada will meet France, which lost 26-7 to New Zealand and placed second in Pool B. As well, there’s France-based Josua “the Fijian Bus” Tuisova in a versatility role and forwards such as Leone Nakarawa to provide possession.
Danielle Waterman, who headed up the women’s rugby programme at Hartpury, was joined by four team-mates for the Women’s Health Naked Issue photoshoot. Poor showings in Dubai and Canada were followed up by impressive performances in Brazil and their home leg in Atlanta which will give them hope of grabbing a medal in Rio this week. “They don’t want the silver”.
Advertisement
“It just looked like a whole bunch of contact and not much strategy and they were scared for my life”, Doyle said.
