Rugby Sevens, Women

There were a couple of minor surprises amongst the qualifiers for the inaugural Olympic rugby sevens tournament. Colombia, with little heritage in the sport, claimed the South American qualifying spot while Spain created a minor upset by qualifying at the expense of Russia. South Africa, in line with their NOC’s policy, refused a qualifying spot based solely on their performance at the African Championships. In general the “big beasts” of women’s sevens comfortably made it to Rio.The format used saw 12 teams sorted into three pools of four teams. The top two teams in each pool were joined in the quarter-finals by the two third place teams with the best records.

At 11am on August 6, 2016 rugby finally re-entered the Olympic Games when Spain’s Patricia Garcia took the kick off in their game against France. The group stages would not provide the same level of excitement as the men’s tournament would do later in the week, with only Fiji’s victory over the USA upsetting the odds. The other notable result of the first phase was the shut out inflicted by 4th seeded Great Britain on 3rd seeded Canada which ensured that the British won the group.

The first three quarter-finals were each won by the more favoured side and all went relatively smoothly for the victors Australia, Canada and Great Britain. The final quarter-final was a very different affair. The powerful figure of New Zealand’s Portia Woodman sped in for a first-half try against the USA, but the Kiwis then spent the second half in desperate, sometimes short-handed, defence. They kept their line intact to ensure their survival in the tournament. The semi-finals followed an identical pattern to each other. The Antipodean pairing of Australia and New Zealand both took early leads against their Northern hemisphere rivals that could not be dented by their opponents. Woodman scored a hat-trick in New Zealand’s win over Great Britain to repeat the feat she had achieved in the pool game against Kenya.

The bronze medal match played immediately before the final saw Canada turn the tables on the British to record a resounding 33-10 victory with Ghislaine Landry contributing 18 of the points. Thus the final was played between the top two seeds and fierce trans-Tasman rivals, Australia and New Zealand. An early score by the New Zealanders was matched, in controversial fashion, by Australia when the referee awarded a try despite Emma Tanigato appearing to fumble the ball in the act of scoring. The Aussies took this piece of luck and built on it by cutting loose and scoring three more tries without reply. By the time New Zealand regained their composure their chances were gone although a late brace of tries gave the scoreboard a more respectable look for the team in black.

Despite Australia taking the gold medal it was New Zealand’s Woodman who emerged as the top try scorer with 10 (including the aforementioned pair of hat-tricks) and top points scorer despite not taking any kicks at goal. Colombia, the lowest ranked by far of all the qualifiers, shipped 161 points in the first four games without themselves once troubling the scoreboard operators. Their streak was eventually broken in the first minute in the 11-12th classification match but they still went down to a defeat by Kenya.