Kenya’s Collins Injera offloads against Fiji on day one of the HSBC World Rugby Sevens Series in Vancouver on 10th March, 2018. Photo credit: Mike Lee – KLC fotos for World Rugby
NAIROBI, Kenya, June 9 – Kenya dropped to the Challenge Trophy at the last leg of the 2017/18 HSBC Sevens World Series in Paris 7s after Fiji bounced back to beat New Zealand 26-17 in the final matches of Pool A.
Kenya needed the favour of New Zealand to beat Fiji after the Innocent Simyu boys had won two and lost one in their Pool matches. They started the day on a losing lone losing 25-5 to the All Blacks,
Shujaa made a comeback in the second match by stunning series leaders Fiji 22-19 before seeing off Samoa 24-10 to wait for the match against Fiji v New Zealand to know if they will make it into the Cup quarters.
Kenya 7s had stunned Fiji 22-19 in their second pool match. Photo/COURTESY
However, with Fiji edging out New Zealand, they joined Kenya and the All Blacks in winning two matches and having lost one to see the top two decided by points difference. Samoa trailed the group after losing all their preliminary round matches
Kenya will now face Argentina in the Challenge Trophy quarters on Sunday at 9:45am.
-Kenya run over Samoa-
Kenya Sevens were too good for Samoa. Photo/COURTESY
Against Samoa, Kenya were too quick for the breakdown; particularly speedster Billy Odhiambo, who took it blind to round the defence and open the scoring.
Odhiambo was at it again, this time scoring on the stroke of half-time to double his team’s tally and prompt the many Kenya fans in the stadium to bow and salute the scorer.
However, Samoa pulled one back through David Afamasaga who showed great athleticism to bustle out of the initial tackles and evade the remaining defenders to score in the corner making the score board read 10-5.
Kenya Sevens star Nelson Oyoo. Photo/COURTESY
In the second half, Kenyan stalwart Collins Injera added another to his career tally for a 270th career try after cutting in from his right wing with perfect execution to completely wrong-foot the defenders and score.
Samoa were reduced to 6 for a deliberate knock-on which made the final 4 minutes especially testing for them.
Shujaa made good use of the advantage with Brian Tanga grabbing another for Kenya before Joe Perez grounded a consolation try for Samoa.
