Wounded New Zealand put Shujaa to the ropes

Kenya hopes of progressing to the quarterfinals of the Olympics rugby sevens tournament took a huge knock when they succumbed 28-5 to wounded New Zealand in their second Pool C encounter in Rio.

Kenya started the match in confidence in hopes to recover from their 31-7 defeat from former colonial masters Great Britain and Dennis Ombachi showed off an incredible step and offloaded to give the ball to Collins Injera who has 253 career tries in the World Series.

Injera knew where the line was as he shifted the gears to give Shujaa a big start before Biko Adema missed the conversion.

The momentum swings in sevens rugby on a sixpence with Willy Ambaka receiving a yellow card for a high tackle on Scott Curry that also handed New Zealand a penalty try.

In a split moment, Akira Ioane used the extra space to score to get the medal favourites who were rattled at that point back on the right track.

However, Ioane squandered a try scoring chance as Injera put in another huge tackle on the line as the teams went to the break with the All Blacks 14-5 to the good. Shortly after the restart Augustine Pulu made no mistake giving New Zealand the first converted five-pointer of the second half for 21-5.

New Zealand finished off with one further try and make sure of the victory. It’s been a difficult day for them but Sir Clive Woodward thinks that this could be ominous for the other teams in this competition.

“They’ll have a meeting tonight and for me it makes them even more dangerous that they haven’t quite hit their straps today,” former England coach, Sir Clive Woodward commented.

Kenya will play Japan on Wednesday evening at 6:00pm (+3GMT) looking for nothing short of a handsome victory to progress after their opponents squad a chance to draw with GB when they missed a conversion in extra time with the scores 19-21.