Australia win Youth Olympic rugby gold

Canada reached an unprecedented third major women’s rugby final in 10 days – but it was Australia who took gold at the Youth Olympics, the first ever gold for women’s rugby at an official IOC event.

Published by John Birch, August 20th, 2014

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Australia win Youth Olympic rugby gold

Dom Du Toit, hat-trick hero in the final and new Australian sevens star

There will have been a feeling of déjà vu in the heart of Canadian women’s rugby. After beating the host nation in a dramatic semi-final hailed as the Game of the Tournament, the Red Nation’s team had to settle for the silver medal for the second time in less than a week.

With the climax of the women’s rugby world cup for their senior team still fresh in the memory, Canada’s youngest were in sevens action at the 2014 Youth Olympics in Nanjing. The women’s tournament ran in parallel with a men’s sevens and represented the first appearance of rugby at an official IOC Games since the 1924 Olympics. Six teams were selected in the women’s competition with Australia, Canada, Tunisia, Spain and the United States joining hosts China.

Australia began as favourites for the tournament, having won the only previous U18 sevens tournament of any significance - last year’s Australian “Youth Olympic Festival” in Sydney, which included China and several Pacific nations. The squad for Nanjing including two gold medalists from Sydney, Brooke Anderson and Tiana Penitiani.

It was that Sydney tournament that introduced the ARU to the amazing talent that is Tiana Penitani, who went on to burst onto the consciousness of everyone else at the start of the Women’s Sevens World Series shortly thereafter. However the world has seen little of Tiana recently due to an enforced 13-month break following a knee injury sustained during the 2013 Sevens World Cup in Moscow, and this tournament was a chance to return to international rugby. And it was no quiet return, for the 18 year-old was not only given the task of captaining the Australian team but, as one of the biggest names at the entire Games, carried the Australian flag at the opening ceremony.

Australia began strong, with Tiana taking a back seat as her team-mates put together a regulation 31-0 first round win over tournament outsiders Tunisia. However for the young Wallaroos two greatest rivals, China and Canada, it was not so easy a start, with the teams meeting head-to-head in the first round. China came out on top 24-10. An exciting first round of games concluded with Spain and the United States drawing 12-12, a result that would make the battle for the fourth semi-final place go right down to the line.

Having warmed up against Tunisia, Australia faced their Chinese hosts in game two. In what was clearly going to be a crucial game, Penitani demonstrated her captaincy skills and individual star quality scoring two tries as the Australians came from behind to beat the hosts 15-12 in the best game of the opening day.

Spain were the only other unbeaten team on Day 1 – but Day 2 was very different, with the Spanish failing to score a point all day as they fell to Canada and Australia. By the end of the day Australia, Canada and China were assured of semi-final places, but the fourth place was still undecided.

Day three began with the final round of pool games. The United States had to win by over 25 points against Tunisia – and then hope that Spain did not get a result against China. They just managed the first part, winning 26-0, and then waited to see if China could do them a favour. In the end they could, beating Spain comfortably and, for the second time in a little over a week, a Spanish team missed agonisingly out on a play-off place in a major championship on points difference. They went on to win fifth place with a comfortable 25-5 win over Tunisia.

In the semi-finals in the afternoon Australia swept into today’s final with a 33-0 win over the United States team, before the crowd settled down for what was the game of the tournament. With a remarkable parallel to last week’s world cup semi-finals, Canada took on the tournament hosts, in this case China. And, as with world cup, the lead changed hands repeatedly.

The Canadians opened the scoring after two minutes through Maddy Seatle . China hit back two minutes later via a LiuXiaoqian try. Ling Chen then put China in the lead with another try in the sixth minute.Canada then leveled things from the final play of the first half with Chanelle Edwards-Challenger.China retook the lead with a second Liu try, but Canada hit back with avengeance and Catherine Boudreault and captain Hannah Darling adding converted tries to take to see the Red Nation qualify for the final of a third major international women’s rugby tournament in ten days (after the World University Sevens Championship ten days ago, and of course last weekend’s World Cup).

The final itself took place this morning – day four of the tournament. Australia only led 12-5 at half time with Canada matching them all the way, but ran away with the game in the second half.

It took under a minute for Australia's Dom Du Toit to score her first try, which followed a clinical passage of play that saw the Australians move the ball across the field, creating an opening room for the pacey Toowoomba 17 year-old to break through and race to the line. Tiana Penitani was shown a yellow card in the near the end of the first period, and Canada took advantage of her absence to hit back when Charity Williams try to make it 5-5.However Williams herself was shown a yellow card shortly afterwards, and Du toit made the most of it to score her second try of the morning.Back to full strength, and with Canada still a player down, Australia incrased their lead at the start of the second half with a Tayla Stanford try before Du Toit added her third two minutes later as Canada’s defence had no answer to the onslaught.Penitani and Marioulla Belessis crossed for two more tries in the final minutes to confirm Australia's gold medal.“It’s an incredible feeling. We knew that we were capable of winning the gold medal. It was just a matter of overcoming the challenge that Canada were going to set for us and they weren’t going to go down without a fight. But we fought really hard to the finish and showed our Aussie spirit,” said Penitai, “That's what we are all about, working hard until the last second and we came together as a team to execute what we did best and it came off in the end.”

Hat-trick hero Dom Du Toit summed up the emotions within a very happy squad: "It is incredible. It is hard to describe the emotions, but I am part of a very special group of girls who fight for each other every single minute and pick each other up when we are up against it."

"This will mean a lot to Australian Rugby, to women’s Rugby and to be able to participate on such a stage is awesome for Rugby around the world."

"For some of our squad, Rio is a reality if we qualify, and we are so pleased that Rugby Sevens is now an Olympic sport. The opportunity to represent Australia on the world’s biggest stage is very exciting."

Canada’s coach John Tait said that too many unforced errors cost his team the gold medal.“Turn overs really haunted us through the tournament. We just take too many turnovers. Turnovers against the weaker teams is fine, but if you gift the ball too much to teams like Australia and China, they will score and then you are chasing the game,” he said.

"These are exciting times for Rugby in Canada and I am so proud of the girls. We got better as the event went on and we worked so hard. To be a part of this event, in these Youth Olympics is very special indeed," said captain Hannah Darling.

China claimed the women's bronze medal after beating USA 12-0.

China’s performances were one of the highlights of a women’s competition that saw great geographical representation and on home soil they delighted fans by defeating USA 12-0 to win bronze.

In doing so, they made history by becoming the first Rugby medallists on an Olympic stage for 90 years and try scorer Yueying Gao believes that China’s bronze will be the catalyst to Rugby becoming a mainstream sport in her country.

"I am very happy that we achieved our mission to win a medal. This is a massive moment for Rugby in China and I hope that it will lead to more boys and girls playing a sport that is a great test of skill, athleticism and character."

"We now look forward to attempting to qualify for Rio 2016."

Results:

Canada 43-12 TunisiaUSA 7-29 ChinaAustralia 41-0 SpainUSA 26-0 TunisiaSpain 0-45 ChinaAustralia 21-5 Canada

5th/6th placeSpain 25-5 Tunisia

Semi-finalsAustralia 33-0 USAChina 19-26 Canada

3rd placeUSA 0-12 China

FinalAustralia 38-10 Canada

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