11 Aug 2016

NZ men's sevens make quarter-finals despite pool loss

5:57 am on 11 August 2016

Rio 2016 Olympics - The NZ sevens team has narrowly avoided elimination from the Olympics - thanks to a pool match win by Fiji.

New Zealand's Tim Mikkelson is tackled sevens match against Great Britain.

New Zealand's Tim Mikkelson is tackled in the match against Great Britain. Photo: AFP

The sevens team was beaten 21-19 by Great Britain in pool play, and was relying on other results to make the quarter-finals.

It needed Brazil to win match against Argentina or Fiji to beat the USA by more than five points to get into the top eight - and in the end Fiji's 24-19 win got NZ through.

New Zealand now has the tough task of meeting favourites Fiji in the quarter-finals later today.

Sam Dickson said it had been a "disappointing" tournament so far, especially considering some injuries to key players.

"But we don't want to put it on that - we could easily have won that game [against Great Britain] and against Japan too, but at the time we were not good enough," he said.

"We are definitely good enough to go all the way, we just hope we get the opportunity. As we saw in that second half, we came back with 19 points against a great Great Britain team."

Look back at all the overnight sevens action here: