New Zealand re-established themselves as World Sevens champions at Murrayfield yesterday after Fiji threw away the chance to take the title for a second successive season.
The Kiwis, champions the first five times the International Rugby Board Sevens World Series was run before Fiji dethroned them last season, arrived in Britain a fortnight ago looking to have little chance of overhauling the South Sea Islanders who led the way for much of the season.
Even after they won the London tournament at Twickenham last week it still looked unlikely because all Fiji needed to do was match their poorest performance in this season's seven previous events and reach the semi-finals.
However when they slipped up against an inspired Wales in the quarter-finals there was no way the New Zealanders - as ruthless in sevens as they are accident prone when it comes to XV-a-side World Cups - were going to do likewise.
"I never let my players think about anything except the next game and we were only focussed on winning the tournament, but going into that last match I was certainly feeling the pressure," said Gordon Tietjens, their coach.
"We knew coming over that we had to win both in London and here and hope something would happen to Fiji along the way. It didn't look like that was going to happen when they reached the Twickenham final, but there are now six to eight teams who can all beat one another on their day and it was a great performance by the Welsh." The event was as much a triumph for the venue as it was for New Zealand and Tietjens acknowledged as much.
"They have done really well here in Edinburgh and I am sure it will grow. I thought we might have been playing in an empty stadium but it was great to win it here because my first tournament as a coach was with Bay of Plenty at Melrose," he pointed out.
As for the debate over whether next year's tournament - which Tietjens says will be his last in charge - should be at Murrayfield or Melrose, who will be hosting the 125th anniversary of founding sevens there, he expressed no preference.
"I'm pleasantly surprised that such a big stadium was so good, but Melrose would also host a magnificent tournament," he said diplomatically.
Organisers declared themselves delighted with the local input, Beth Coulter, the IRB Sevens manager, indicating that the running of the event compared favourably with the previous week's tournament at Twickenham. Participating teams also thoroughly enjoyed being based in Edinburgh and, vitally, the Scottish public responded beyond expectation.
The weather was also kinder than forecast, doubtless helping boost the attendance, but it was assured that the 25,000 target would be hit by Friday evening with that number of tickets already issued by then. By close of play yesterday the total figure was close to 30,000 over the two days, 13,907 on Saturday and 15,498 yesterday.
The atmosphere was excellent, very much the party mood associated with these events across the world, a certain pantomime element taking over with underdogs favoured while baddies were subjected to good-natured bating. Then again, only at seven-a-side rugby could citizens of the vast Republic of South Africa be deemed worthy of the audience's sympathies against the big, nasty men from the islands of Fiji.
That was in the Plate tournament semi-final, following that shock defeat for the Fijians at the hands of the Welsh. From that point it seemed as inevitable that New Zealand would be inaugural winners of the Ned Haig Cup and in turn take the World Series title, as it had before the tournament that Fiji would lift it.
The intriguing possibility of a three-way tie also emerged since Samoa could reach a 126 points season total by winning this event. Had they beaten New Zealand and Fiji lost the Bowl final that would have forced a count-back on points differential across the entire campaign.
By the time the main cup final was underway Samoa's chance had gone, courtesy of the eight points Fiji picked up for winning the Plate tournament, beating the Kenyans in the final.
In coming back from 14-0 down with four second half tries to beat Argentina in the semi-final, Samoa suggested that they might challenge the New Zealanders to lift the trophy and help their South Seas neighbours do likewise.
They were competitive in the opening half of the final, a Fautua Otto try keeping them in the hunt, albeit Adam Thomson had crossed the line twice for New Zealand. However the contest was killed off by indiscipline when Lolo Lui was sin-binned for a late tackle as the half entered injury time and his team-mates were understandably unable to prevent DJ Forbes scoring direct from the penalty to stretch the advantage to what looked an unassailable 19-5 lead.
Any remaining doubt was removed when Forbes scored his second try midway through the second half. Tomasi Cama, who had converted two tries, then claimed one of his own and Willie Rickards finished things off with an interception score as they cruised a disappointingly one-sided victory.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article