Samoa misses out on Rio Sevens

For a few seasons now, Samoa's sevens side has looked a shadow of the team which regularly challenged for the title. However, recent results have been much better, and they were favourites to take the play-off for the final Olympic sevens berth.

Instead, Spain beat them 22-19 in Monaco to qualify.

Teams had three chances to get to Rio. The top 4 teams from last year's series went through automatically (NZ, Fiji, South Africa and Team GB)

Then, we had regional play-offs, and Australia took the Oceania spot, which left Samoa vying to take the spot available to the best of the rest.

Spain weren't even regarded as the next best in Monaco. Canada and Russia have both claimed serious scalps which saw them as Samoa's main challengers.

The final Olympic line-up:

Fiji, South Africa, New Zealand, Great Britain, Australia, USA, Argentina, France, Kenya, Japan, Brazil, Spain

http://www.planetrugby.com/news/spain-stun-samoa-to-qualify-for-olympics/

Congratulations to Spain! It's great to see a new nation get a chance to spread the rugby news to a football mad country. That's the whole point of rugby in the Olympics - Spain has a chance to reach 500 times the number of people that Samoa would.