U.S. to meet Britain, Fiji to play Australia in rugby 7s quarterfinals at Tokyo Olympics

TOKYO — Olympic champion Jerry Tuwai keeps repeating the mantra that Fiji treats each crippled arsenic a final.

Now Fiji’s Olympic rugby sevens rubric defence truly does hinge connected each crippled it plays.

The Fijians raced to a 19-0 half-time pb against Britain connected Tuesday successful a rematch of the 2016 last and finished 33-7 to unafraid apical spot successful Pool B and a quarterfinal lucifer against Australia, which placed 3rd successful Pool A down top-ranked New Zealand and Argentina.

“We were not playing the mode we wanted to be, but we’re thankful we came retired connected apical of GB,” Tuwai said. “We look guardant to our adjacent final, which is our adjacent game.”

Britain didn’t conceded immoderate points successful its opening-day wins implicit Canada and Japan successful blistery and humid conditions but had occupation containing the Fijian onslaught successful the wet.

“It’s a bully wakeup telephone successful a way,” Britain backmost Dan Norton said. “Just due to the fact that we’ve had 1 blip, we’ve been present before, we’re into the quarterfinals and that’s each that matters.”

South Africa, the bronze medalist successful Rio de Janeiro 5 years ago, went down aboriginal against the United States earlier rallying to clinch apical spot successful Pool C with a 17-12 win. The South Africans volition conscionable Argentina and the Americans volition look Britain successful the quarterfinals aboriginal Tuesday. New Zealand volition unfastened the knockout rounds against Canada.

The quarterfinal winners beforehand to the medal rounds connected Wednesday; the losers spell into the classification rounds to find 5th to eighth places. Ireland, Kenya, South Korea and 2016 semifinalist Japan are retired of medal contention.

Whatever happens successful the quarterfinals, the U.S. men volition decorativeness higher than they did successful Rio. They took the crippled up to South Africa, with Joe Schroder reaching implicit to people the opening effort aft the Americans dispersed the shot archetypal to the close and backmost to the left.

Danny Barrett got wrong yards of the enactment but didn’t person the gait to bushed the screen defence oregon widen the U.S. lead.

The South Africans deed backmost close connected fractional clip aft winning a 5-yard scrum and sending the shot to the near for Selvyn Davids to people successful the corner, making it 5-5.

Stedman Gans and Davids scored tries successful speedy succession arsenic South Africa took a 17-5 pb midway done the 2nd fractional earlier Brett Thompson chopped the borderline to 5 points with a effort successful the past minute.

“Our extremity was ever to marque the quarters,” Thompson said. “Coming retired of the excavation and having that accidental for the medal rounds, that’s truly each we tin ask.”

A 12-team tourney meant the apical 2 teams successful each of the 3 groups precocious automatically to the past eight, on with the 2 champion third-place teams.

Australia and Canada got the past 2 spots successful the quarterfinals, with Ireland narrowly missing out.

Top-ranked New Zealand had to rally from a 12-0 shortage and immoderate antiaircraft concerns exposed by Samu Kerevi to borderline Australia 14-12. Argentina trounced South Korea 56-0 to instrumentality the 2nd spot successful Pool A.

Canada took the 3rd spot successful Pool B with a 36-12 triumph implicit 2016 semifinalist Japan, which finished the radical signifier with 3 losses.