Frankie Harvey - rugby 7s
Meet our next Olympic reporter Frankie Harvey!
Frankie is 10 from Essex in the UK and ❤❤❤ rugby! She is reporting on rugby 7s for We are Girls in Sport.
Here is her report!
Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games. Women’s Rugby 7s Report
In my opinion, rugby is the greatest sport in the world. I have played it for 5 years, and do everything I can to encourage other girls to play rugby.
This year the Women’s Rugby 7s was part of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic games, and was held on 29th, 30th and 31st of July.
For those who do not know much about Rugby 7s, these are the basics. There are 7 players per team on the pitch at one time, with 5 substitutes. The matches are split into two 7-minute halves. Players will attempt to score tries, by placing the ball over the try line. Players in possession of the ball can be stopped by the other team players tackling them.
Each try is worth 5 points with a conversion kick being taken after every try which is worth another 2 points. The ball must be passed backwards and can not be thrown forwards, or dropped, this would result in a scrum. In 7s, the scrums are made of 3 players from either team, who compete for the ball to win possession. If the ball goes over the touch line you get a line out.
12 teams competed in the event, being split into 3 groups of 4. Each team played the other teams in their group once, and the top 2 teams from each group as well as the best 2 third place finishes went into the quarter finals.
Group A was New Zealand, Great Britain, Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) and Kenya. Group B was France, Fiji, Canada and Brazil. Group C was United States, China, Australia and Japan. New Zealand were big favourites before the tournament started, but teams like Australia, Great Britain, France and Fiji were also teams that could win gold.
There was set to be some very exciting players at this year’s Olympics, including Shannon Izar of France, Jas Joyce of Great Britain, Ariana Ramsey of United States, Portia Woodman of New Zealand (pictured right) and many others spread throughout all the teams.
As expected, New Zealand topped Group A, winning all 3 of their matches, with a highlight of the tournament being their win over Great Britain after going down 21-0 in the first half, to come back and win 26-21. Great Britain came 2nd in the group with ROC qualifying for the quarter finals as one of the 2 top third place finishers.
France won Group B, winning all their games fairly comfortably, with their highest scoring game being their 40-5 win over Brazil, Fiji came 2nd after losing 1 game to France.
Group C was won by United States after wins against China and Japan, with a hard fought and close victory over reigning Olympic champions Australia 14-12. China also qualified for the Quarter Finals as the other best third place finisher.
The Quarter Finals saw New Zealand comfortable beat ROC 36-0, Fiji beat Australia 14-12 in a highly competitive match. Great Britain were victorious over United States, winning 21-12 and France beat China 24-10. This meant New Zealand would play Fiji and Great Britain would play France in the Semi Finals.
Both Semi Finals could have been won by any of the teams, with them all having played really well up to that point. New Zealand beat a hard-working Fiji team 22-17. France went on to beat Great Britain 26-19 in a very entertaining match. This meant that New Zealand would play France in the final for Gold and Fiji would play Great Britain for Bronze.
The Bronze medal match ended 21-12 to Fiji, after a physical and fast paced match, seeing Great Britain finish 4th for the second Olympics in a row, and Fiji getting revenge on Great Britain for betting them in the Quarter Finals at the 2016 games. The Fijian women are now the 1st women from Fiji to win an Olympic medal.
New Zealand lived up to the hype, winning the Gold Medal by betting France 26-12, giving France the Silver medal. Both teams improved on their 2016 games finishes.
All in all, the tournament has been incredible, and inspiring for women and girls all over the world and will go a long way to get more girls and woman playing rugby that have never played it before. As a young rugby player, I have learnt so much about rugby 7s and the Olympics, and am now focus on playing Rugby 7s for Great Britain at the Olympics as soon as I can.