In the span of 14 minutes, the All Blacks Sevens saw their Olympic dream shattered before the Games even began.
In the span of 14 seconds, veteran Andrew Knewstubb captured the collective pain the side were suffering in that nightmare scenario.
New Zealand were eliminated from the men’s tournament by South Africa at Stade de France on Thursday night, a crushing result for a group who had hoped to improve on the silver medal won in 2021.
Instead, with the opening ceremony still a day away, the quarter-final defeat wrecked that occasion, the team’s shot at gold and two years of gruelling rehabilitation for Knewstubb.
The veteran battled through consecutive ACL tears in the same knee just to reach Paris, where earlier on Thursday he scored a last-minute try to edge Ireland and avoid a quarter-final clash with defending champions Fiji.
South Africa had seemed the preferred opponent given New Zealand were 17-5 victors when the teams met the previous day in pool play. While the Kiwi side came into the tournament with triumphs in the last two legs of the World Sevens Series, their foes had failed to record a top-three finish in any of the previous seven events.
Yet that pedigree counted for nothing as New Zealand fell behind 14-0 and, after pulling back a try, found themselves unable to convert numerous chances to level the scores late in the second half.
That frustration was manifest on Knewstubb’s face moments after the final whistle. Asked to assess where it had all gone wrong, the Tokyo medallist could barely muster a word, his long silence saying it all.
Finally, voice quiet and the emotions of the match impossible to suppress, he said: “We lost. It wasn’t good enough. We had our chances but it wasn’t good enough.”
That succinct summation was echoed by captain Dylan Collier, confronted by the reality of his campaign ending before the Olympic torch had been lit.
“It’s gonna hurt for a little bit,” Collier said. “We just couldn’t execute when it counted.
Brady Rush looks dejected following defeat in the men's Rugby Sevens quarter-finals to South Africa. Photo / Getty Images
“We were getting ourselves near the line and we just couldn’t quite get over there. I’m just extremely disappointed, especially after the way we started the tournament. I thought we played pretty well up until that point.”
New Zealand had advanced with three wins from pool play, though South Africa proved stubborn opposition. Their superior pace was especially telling on defence during the quarter-final, running down a number of threats that could have led to tries.
Collier conceded that his team became “a little bit individual” when attempting to erase the deficit in the waning minutes, allowing South Africa to inflict another dose of pain following last year’s Rugby World Cup final at the same venue.
Unlike the All Blacks, allowed to privately nurse their wounds, the sevens side will be back on the field in classification matches on Saturday. Such an ask seems almost cruel but Collier will be demanding his teammates respond to the occasion.
“We’ve got to hurt and we’ve got to take that hurt - it’s not every day you get to play at an Olympic Games,” he said. “We’re lucky we’ve got a day off with the opening ceremony so it gives us a chance to regroup.
“Every chance you get to wear the black jersey you’ve got to make the most of it. You never know when it’s going to be your last.”
- Kris Shannon in Paris
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