Ireland star left ‘speechless’ after controversial Fiji try ends Olympic dream

Ireland’s Olympic Rugby Sevens journey came to an end on Thursday evening as Fiji completed a stunning 19-12 comeback to seal a place in the semi-finals.

Ireland were one of the favourites for Gold at Paris 2024, particularly after going undefeated in the pool stages, beating South Africa, Japan and New Zealand to progress into the quarter-finals.

Controversial try seals Fiji’s semi-final spot

Despite going 7-0 down early on in the last-eight fixture, Ireland fought back and went into a 15-7 lead after a Chay Mullins brace and a Zac Ward try.

However, defending gold medalists, Fiji, scored two quick-fire tries to regain the lead with the winning try being hotly debated after a knock-on by Fiji at the restart which the referee did not spot.

The TMO in sevens is only able to review instances in the act of scoring in the shorter format of the game meaning they were unable to intervene and rule out the try.

Speaking after the match, Ireland star Mullins was understandably disappointed by the quarter-final exit and believed that it was clearly a knock-on by Fiji.

“It’s the ref’s decision at the end of the day,” he conceded.

“We had a view on the pitch that it was a knock-on but the ref thought otherwise so that’s the game, really.

“It’s massively disappointing. They’re the only two words I can really think of. Speechless. We obviously wanted to make it through the quarter-final and we felt like we were there, that we had them, and for the majority of the game we were the better team. Again, just decision-making and just slight drop-offs [cost us].”

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TMO duties need to change in sevens

Ireland head coach James Topping also weighed in on the decision but admitted that he did not get a good view of the replay. However, he did say that the responsibilities of the TMO in sevens does need to be reviewed.

“I didn’t see it, I’m at the side of the pitch and even the angle of the replay doesn’t show it,” he said.

“We would have lost games this year if they were to look back and there were knock-ons.

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“The decision is made but maybe it’s something to look at down the line if they can clean those things up. We should have caught that kick-off is what we would say, probably.”

He added: “To be honest, we probably made three or four mistakes in that game and that’s three or four scores and the games,

“It’s disappointing. We were ahead by a score but you can’t just bank on that there and try to just park the bus and expect them not to come back at you.”

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