The last time they played rugby at the Olympics the game ended in a mass brawl between 15 Americans and a few hundred furious Frenchmen. The sport’s comeback, the best part of a century later, may have taken place in a mostly empty scaffolding stadium two hours outside Rio’s city centre, but at least no one tried to invade the pitch to pick a fight with the winning team. And while the few people who were there did have to watch a lonely MC try to persuade 10,000 empty plastic chairs to join him for a call-and-response chorus of Sweet Caroline, none of the players were knocked cold by an ornery old man wielding a walking stick, which is exactly what happened to the USA’s Gideon Nelson back in 1924. By the Olympics’ own measures, then, this was a great success.
The opening game was at 11am. France played Spain in the very first women’s Olympic rugby match. Within the very first minute, the handful of travelling fans who had turned up to watch, all cowering in scant patches of shade seeking shelter from the ferociously hot sun, were treated to a re-set scrum. The intricacies of which will, no doubt, have done wonders to win over all the TV viewers around the world who had tuned in for a first glimpse of the sport. Rather better, France’s loping back Camille Grassineau then scored the tournament’s first try. And it was a fine one, as she sprinted in from the left wing. So we saw, for the first time, a little of the speed which makes Sevens such a fun game to watch and such an exhausting one to play.
France won that first match 24-7. A return to form, then, after their 17-3 loss to the USA at the Stade Colombes 92 years earlier. You might say they owed the sport a good performance, given that it was the behaviour of their fans that caused the International Olympic Committee to boot rugby out of the Games in the first place. The USA had won the title in 1920, so were defending champions when they played France in 1924. But the bookmakers still had them down as 20-1 underdogs. Which wasn’t all that unreasonable, given that most of the squad had only ever played American football, and a handful were only picked after they answered a newspaper advert calling for volunteers. One of their players, Norman Cleaveland, later recalled that the team were supposed to “go to Paris and take our beatings like gentlemen”.
That wasn’t quite how it played out. The Americans battered the French players so badly that at the end of the match the crowd attacked them back. Rugby had been played at three of the first five Olympics. In fact the founder of the IOC, Pierre de Coubertin, was a great fan of the game – he had based so much of his thinking on the philosophies Thomas Arnold used to run Rugby school. De Coubertin even refereed the first French Championship final in 1892. But he died in 1925 and after the debacle in Paris, the IOC decided that perhaps the sport wasn’t such a good fit with its Olympian values after all.
It was 2009 before they changed their mind. And about time. Sevens, unlike golf, which has also returned to the Olympic program this year, feels like a sport that suits the Games. Not least because so many of the players are specialists, so, in time, this competition could feasibly become the pinnacle of the sport. Add to that the facts that it’s so short you can fit the competition into a few days, and so simple that anyone can learn to play it, even in countries where the 15-a-side game hardly figures. Kenya were next up after France and Spain. But they had the misfortune to be matched against New Zealand, and were thrashed 52-0.
After that, it was the main game of the morning session, Great Britain against Brazil. By then the ground had started to fill up. It was still a long way short of being sold out, but at least a few hundred locals had come along to cheer for their team. And for the first time, the crowd sounded so loud that you couldn’t hear everything the referee was saying. Suitably inspired, Brazil dominated the first four minutes, and would surely have taken the lead if Julia Sardá hadn’t dropped a simple pass when she was open on the right wing.
Great Britain found themselves doing some desperate defending on their own try-line, until Joanne Watmore broke clear down the left wing from her own half for the first try. Then the Brazilians kicked a penalty, which received the loudest cheer of the day, and it was 7-3 at half-time.
In the second half, Great Britain pulled rapidly away. Natasha Hunt scored two simple tries from penalties, and Jasmine Joyce one with a wonderful looping run around the outside defender. Another for Emily Scott, and in the end it was 29-3. With nothing left to cheer, the Brazilian fans spent the second half booing the referee.
Great Britain looked rusty and will have to improve plenty to push New Zealand and Australia, who walloped Colombia 53-0, later in the tournament.
Five hours later, though, Great Britain were in action again, this time looking much sharper in a 40-0 win over Japan. Amy Wilson-Hardy scored twice in the first half and Heather Fisher crossed over to round off the scoring, with three tries in between.
But for now, as Hunt said after the match against Brazil, it was enough to be able to say: “We just made history.”
