| Dates: 23 July-8 August Time in Tokyo: BST +8 |
| Coverage: Watch live on BBC TV, BBC iPlayer, BBC Red Button and online; Listen on BBC Radio 5 Live, Sports Extra and Sounds; live text and video clips on BBC Sport website and app. |
Great Britain sevens star Dan Bibby has described a planned future sevens programme as “a joke” after the team missed out on a medal in Tokyo.
Great Britain lost 17-12 to a fired-up Argentina in the bronze match in Tokyo.
The team’s central contracts ended in August as the Rugby Football Union cut costs amid a Covid funding squeeze.
“Being brutally honest, it’s a joke. We have been offered eight contracts. Eight contracts is ridiculous,” said Bibby.
“You are asking us to play against a team like New Zealand with eight boys on not much more than minimum wage. It’s impossible.
“If they are not going to fund it, be grown-up about it, come out and say it. But not all this wishy-washy absolute nonsense. That is my view on it.”
The English, Welsh and Scottish unions all said in December that they were reviewing their sevens set-up for after the Olympics.
Rugby sevens is on the Commonwealth Games programme for Birmingham 2022, where the teams will compete separately instead of as Great Britain.
The Rio 2016 silver medallists, who were without injured team captain Tom Mitchell, were denied a spot on the podium as Ignacio Mendy ran in a decisive late try in the third-place play-off.
“To be here in the first place is a bit of a miracle from where we were 12 months ago to now,” added Bibby.
“It’d be lovely to have something tangible to show everyone and say this is what all that graft and hard work was about. But we don’t care about that really – we know what went on, we know how hard we worked to just get the team together.
“That is bigger than any medal. I would trade all the medals in the world for the friendships that I have here.”
Great Britain’s preparations were thrown into chaos when they were told to find other jobs last summer.
Their training has also been disrupted by a series of lockdowns that some of their international rivals, New Zealand in particular, were less affected by.
As an emotional Mitchell watched from the stands, the future of the sevens programme, supported since December by a short-term commercial partnership between the National Lottery and the English, Scottish and Welsh unions, looked no more certain.
Great Britain, beaten 29-7 by New Zealand in their semi-final earlier in the day, had led inside 30 seconds of their final game as Ben Harris went over.
But Lautaro Bazan Velez broke blind to level before 21-year-old Marcos Moneta, the star of his side’s extraordinary six-man win over South Africa in the last eight, stepped Dan Norton to cross.
Ollie Lindsay-Hague scored after the interval for Great Britain, however Mendy’s electric burst outside Alex Davis proved decisive.
Fiji retain historic landmark title
Fiji beat New Zealand 27-12 to win only the second gold in their country’s Olympic history. Their first came five years ago when rugby made its debut in Rio and they won the same title.
A nation of less than a million people and considerably fewer resources than most of their rivals, Fiji’s offloading and pace proved too potent for New Zealand as they ran in four tries.
Bristol’s Semi Radradra, one of the best-paid players in the 15-a-side format, was an unused replacement as his less high-profile team-mates completed their title defence without him.
The side, coached by Welshman Gareth Baber, will be denied the homecoming scenes of national celebration that greeted their 2016 predecessors.
The South Pacific island nation had been largely untouched by Covid-19, with only two deaths linked to the disease by the end of March.
However Covid-related deaths have risen to more than 200 since then, with reports the country’s health service is in danger of collapse.
