Kolinisau scored a crucial try in Fiji’s 12-7 win over New Zealand on Wednesday in a quarterfinal match between the two teams widely expected to be playing for gold.
Advertisement
South Africa play Australia, Britain face Argentina and Japan will hope to continue their fairytale run against France in the other quarter-final matches later on Wednesday. The island nation of just more than 900,000 people has never won an Olympic medal in any sport – but came into the Rio as the favorites in the first rugby competition since 1924, and have not disappointed.
It is a scenario that perfectly illustrates the unpredictability of Sevens and one that will delight World Rugby in their endeavour to make rugby a truly global game.
Fiji, which won its group stage at 3-0, takes on Japan today in the semifinals at 1:30 p.m. (ET, NBCSN).
The Japanese, ranked 10th of the 12 teams at the tournament and hosts of the next Olympics, picked up where they left off on Tuesday with a 31-7 thumping of world sevens series regulars Kenya to ensure they would be in the last eight.
Fiji and Britain are the only unbeaten teams in the tournament.
Team USA, an outside medal contender, fell to Fiji 24-19 in their third match in Pool A. The United States knew that, even if they lost, so long as it was by three points or less, they would move on to the quarterfinals.
“We looked like we were going to get a gold medal in the equestrian and that got taken away”.
“We’re number one in the world, we’re not trying to be arrogant, we’re saying this is what we want”.
Following on from what was a bitterly disappointing Rio Olympics sevens campaign, where a silver medal was all that was mustered from what would have been considerable aspirations, the autopsy by the media and public opinion of such a uncharacteristic poor showing has begun in earnest.
“Getting to the Olympics in itself is an achievement but to knock out New Zealand along the way is pretty special”, said Auckland-born Lemeki.
“It’s pretty insane, we’ve been told we’ve got to turn our phones off between games”, he said.
Many have been intensely loyal to him over the years but others have been critical of him, and Kurt Baker said after missing selection for the Olympic squad he felt “used” by Tietjens and that some higher profile players didn’t want to commit to the programme because they didn’t feel comfortable in the sevens environment.
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.
“I thought we’d come here, win a few games, give it a good go”.
Advertisement
“I don’t think it is a matter of countries passing us”.
