Spain, the final team to qualify for Rio 2016 as repechage winners, ended their Olympic campaign on a winning note with a 21-0 defeat of a tired-looking Fiji to claim seventh place overall.
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In scenes reminiscent of Japan’s memorable win over South Africa at last year’s 15-a-side Rugby World Cup, the Japanese team kept fans on the edge of their seats as they won.
Most of her gold medal winning teammates received similar invitations as the ARU went searching for Olympic talent after sevens’ inclusion in the Rio Games.
The Aussies beat arch rival New Zealand 24-17 later Monday for gold.
For one member of the Australian squad the gold medal completed a unique double, Nicole Beck having been part of her country’s side that also won the first ever Women’s Rugby World Cup Sevens back in 2009, just six months before the International Olympic Committee voted to include rugby sevens on the Olympic programme for Rio 2016 and Tokyo 2020.
Argentina scored after the siren to edge the United States 17-14 in another tight tussle between closely-ranked teams in the earlier Pool A match.
They play Japan later on Tuesday and continue against New Zealand on Wednesday.
Their lead was short-lived, however, as Gillies Kaka exchanged passes with Akira Ioane before putting in skipper Scott Curry.
Great Britain are also in New Zealand’s group, but they had few issues in seeing off Kenya 31-7 thanks to tries from Dan Bibby (2), Mark Bennett, Dan Norton and Phil Burgess.
New Zealand, seeded third in the tournament and the dominant power in the worldwide game, were stunned 14-12 by the Japanese, who were ranked 10th out of the 12 teams taking part.
After taking an early lead they slipped 12-7 behind – but the All Blacks missed conversion attempt on their second try proved crucial, with Japan somehow finding a second try which they successfully converted to grab the lead.
The absence of Williams helped Japan. “Our game-plan was to try and stop his offloading”.
“But silver’s still good in New Zealand’s eyes and we hope we have done them proud”.
An emotional Scarratt said: “We are massively disappointed”.
“It’s unbelievable, you never see a minnow team come here and beat a team supposed to be a gold medal contender”.
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“I was playing touch football, I just got a letter in the mail from the ARU saying come and have a crack at rugby, potentially go to the Olympics”, Quirk said. “We thought, if we keep on moving the ball around, the big guys will tire somewhere and eventually they did”.
