Team GB’s men took an historic silver as rugby’s return to the Olympic Games at Rio 2016 concluded with Fiji being crowned champions in Deodoro.
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Fiji won their first-ever Olympic medal in Brazil, comfortably beating Team GB 43-7 in the final to take gold in the rugby sevens.
A group of burly Fijian rugby players gather in a circle, eyes shut tight, heads thrown back and tears streaming down their cheeks, as they sing a hymn of victory.
The Fiji Times reported fans danced in the street and said many called for Fiji’s England-born coach Ben Ryan to be granted honorary Fiji citizenship.
“We were lucky enough to pull it off in such spectacular fashion”.
To top it all off, prime minister Frank Bainimaram said there would be a national holiday on August 22 to celebrate the historic win. If you’d have said 12 weeks ago that we’d have had an opportunity to win a gold medal, I think we would have bitten your hand off.
“People will now start looking for that dot”.
Josua Tuisova added another try shortly after half-time, and although Dan Norton claimed a consolation score for Britain, Fiji inevitably had the final word when Viliame Mata crossed the whitewash. “We don’t have the money and the bucks that Britain has but we managed to beat them”.
He said: “We’ve been the best side in the world for the last two years but the pressure came on here and we delivered”.
Great Britain lost in the final, but still won a silver medal, followed by South Africa in the bronze medal position.
“Rugby at the Olympics, the win will go to rugby because it’s going to get people off the couch and hopefully they’ll come out and play rugby”, Tuiqere said.
New Zealand, which has dominated sevens for much of the last two decades but was sent out of the tournament by the Fijians in the quarterfinals Wednesday, finished fifth.
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In the first period on Thursday, Fiji made five tries, each of them a true demonstration of power and skill that astonished the rugby world.
