Great Britain’s inexcusable inability to keep their heads was a major source of their downfall on a disastrous finals day in the inaugural Olympic women’s rugby sevens tournament won by Australia.
Simon Middleton’s side had three players sent to the sin-bin, two contemporaneously, across a pair of matches as they went from genuine gold medal hopefuls to distraught bronze medal match losers at the Deodoro Stadium. To add ignominy to indiscipline, they missed out on a podium place after getting slaughtered 33-10 by Canada, a team they had swatted aside by an almost identical margin the previous day.
Their failure to make the podium followed an equally dispiriting semi-final rout at the hands of New Zealand. While there is no shame in losing to the All Blacks in any form of rugby, Great Britain’s women could scarcely have made life more difficult for themselves as they were subjected to a 25-7 thrashing. Having led briefly in the first half, two of their number put their hand on the self-destruct button and shoved it as hard as they could. Anyone who has played sevens will know how exhausting an activity it can be, with 14 players on two teams struggling to cover acres of ground designed to sap the strength of more than twice that number.
To have one player sin-binned for two minutes – an eternity when you are on the back foot – might seem unfortunate but to have two dismissed within seconds of each other in an Olympic semi-final is not so much careless as downright moronic. Katy McLean and Amy Wilson-Hardy were the guilty parties just before half-time and their team duly paid the price for the pair’s foolishness. In the subsequent bronze medal decider the experienced captain Emily Scarratt was sent to the line and was so distraught after the final whistle that she refused to chat to waiting reporters.
“We came up against two sides that were absolutely outstanding over the course of the games and we couldn’t really live with the pace that they set,” said Middleton. “We hurt ourselves with a few other things that we did. They were fair cards, we made errors and we got punished for them. It’s hard enough playing the New Zealanders with seven on the field, never mind five.”
Having had a couple of hours to regroup following their semi-final nightmare, Great Britain quickly found themselves on the back foot once again. Karen Paquin and Ghislaine Landry both crossed to put Canada ahead, only for Danielle Waterman to pull a score back for the British. Faster, slicker and far less error-prone throughout, Canada quickly piled three more scores on the board, with Landry crossing for the second score of a hat-trick. It was then that Scarratt received her marching orders, allowing Bianca Farella and Kelly Russell to put both the game and bronze medal beyond their opponents by half-time. A Jasmine Joyce try shortly after the interval was no consolation for the losers.
“It didn’t come together against New Zealand, they were the better team,” said Heather Fisher. “After that we just didn’t show up against Canada. Obviously the sin binning didn’t help us. They executed better than us, our basics let us down and the rest is history, as they say. We’re just empty. They say it’s not about the destination but the journey, don’t they? I’m going to have to think about that because obviously a medal would have made it all worthwhile.”
Few had expected Canada to win their semi-final against the world champions Australia, but everyone loves an underdog. The Australians went on to justify their favouritism by beating New Zealand in the final by 24-17, a scoreline that flattered the silver medallists. With three minutes of the 14 remaining, New Zealand had been trailing 24-5, after opening the scoring, but indiscipline in their own ranks cost them dearly after Portia Woodman, scorer of three tries against the British, had to spend two minutes on the Naughty Step for a deliberate knock-on. Within seconds Evania Pelite had darted over in the corner to give Australia a decent half-time advantage. Green extended their lead soon after the break, before Charlotte Caslick put the game well beyond New Zealand.
This has been a poorly attended tournament. While the first sevens medal matches in Olympic history attracted a decent crowd engaging in what can loosely be described as “bawdy banter” before, during and after each contest, most games were played out in an arena empty enough to make one yearn for the considerably more boisterous atmosphere of that hideous annual sevens tournament at Twickenham packed with braying imbeciles wearing fancy dress and chugging lager through their own socks.
Such carry-on may not necessarily be the legacy Scottish butcher’s apprentice Ned Haig envisioned when he invented the game in 1883, but the presence of several thousand Bananamen, convicts and Mexican bandits would at least have taken the bare look off the Deodoro Stadium and given those participating the impression people cared. Mercifully, considerably more seats were occupied than empty for the final two matches.
