Australia to play Spain in Olympic sevens quarters after US 'kick up the pants'

A last-gasp conversion from Chloe Dalton denied the United States a famous victory over favourites Australia in a thrilling women's rugby sevens duel at the Olympics here Sunday.

Dalton's drop-goal secured a 12-12 draw for the Aussies, who will now face Spain in the quarter-finals. The result condemned the USA to a last eight meeting with New Zealand.

The US team had looked to be on their way to a shock victory thanks to a brace of tries from Jessica Javelet after Emma Tonegato had opened the scoring.

But Tonegato scrambled over for her own second with mere seconds left, Dalton stepping up and drop-goaling what coach Tim Walsh called a "gold medal" conversion.

"It was a bit disappointing," said Walsh, who saw speedster Ellia Green taken off after 30 seconds following a clash of heads with Kathryn Johnson.

"We haven't got the loss next to our name but it was definitely the kick up the pants that we needed going into a quarter-final.

"To play six really great games is a pretty tough thing to do so I'm hoping that was just our one bad one."

The American women, who lost to Fiji on Saturday, now face a dangerous New Zealand after the Kiwis downed France 26-7 with two more tries from the unstoppable Kayla McAlister.

McAlister, who crossed the whitewash four times on Saturday, was in masterful form as her team went out to 19-7 at half-time at the Deodoro Stadium.

A defiant French team offered a solid defence and competitiveness at the breakdown to guarantee themselves second spot in Pool B and a quarter-final against Canada.

After not conceding a single try on Saturday, Canada were well beaten, 22-0, by Britain, who topped Pool C and will play Fiji, whose 36-0 trouncing of pointless Colombia was enough to guarantee them second place in Pool A, just ahead of the USA.

- Brazil triumph -

In the battle of the minnows of Pool C, with just one Brazilian penalty between them in the "points for" column on Saturday, Brazil ran out 26-10 victors over Japan to send the crowd of a few thousand wild.

The Japanese battled back to take a 10-5 lead in blistering conditions with temperatures around 35 degrees celsius (95F), but first Amanda Araujo scored and then Beatriz Muhlbauer crossed for a late double to secure the win.

"We achieved what we wanted, we beat Japan," an elated Eduardo Mufarej, president of the Brazilian rugby union, told AFP.

"We knew we had tough pool games with Britain and Canada but our women played outstandingly against Japan. It's a good moment and has set the base for future development of rugby in Brazil."

Mufarej said the Deodoro Stadium, which was just under half-full for the second day's play, was "very well suited for rugby sevens".

"It's the first time rugby sevens is being played in the Olympics so it's always a challenge and there's a level of excitement about what we're going to see," he said, adding that it had been the right decision by Brazil's rugby administrators not to have gone touting for foreign players to bolster their ranks.

"We've been preparing for this for quite a long time. It hasn't been a smooth road as we have a very limited base of players.

"But we decided to develop those players and not bring in and naturalise players, we had to play with whatever we had locally. But we have a good gene pool here in Brazil."