1. Women’s Sevens Book a Place at the Rio Olympic Games
We kick off this week’s Tuesday Top Five with our most successful national rugby team, once again doing us proud.
In some great news, the Australian women’s rugby sevens team has qualified for the Rio Olympic Games. Winning all three pool games in Amsterdam the Australians put their qualification beyond doubt.
Fresh from winning the Twickenham tournament the Aussies travelled to Amsterdam for the sixth and final tournament of the season. Australia comfortably beat Russia (29-7), China (48-0) and England (24-7) in the pool stage, cruising into the knockout stages and direct qualification for Rio.
From there they beat both Russia in the quarters and England in the semis by a combined margin of 57-0 to book a place in the final against Canada.
The final was a much closer affair with Canada pipping the Australians with a try in the last 30 seconds to win 20-17.
Here’s the match:
Australia’s coach Tim Walsh summed up the emotional roller-coaster of the last few weeks:
“The highs of winning in London and qualifying for the Olympics but then losing the final like that stings. The girls are so disappointed, but we will learn from that.
“We’ve won in quite a few different ways this weekend in Amsterdam and adapted so well. The competition is so fierce now that you need to plan for every eventuality – dry weather, wet weather, opposition style, and so on.
“Sharni Williams has been spectacular for us in the last few weeks while Emma Tonegato is simply a world-class player who proved that again in Amsterdam.”
The other three automatic qualifiers for Rio are New Zealand, Canada and England.
