In the early hours of Monday morning, the men’s rugby sevens competition gets underway at the Olympic Games in Tokyo with reigning champions Fiji up against hosts Japan.
Hopefully, followers of our Twitter feed @betsonrugby would have taken Japan at +33.5 as they are now +27.5 (5/6). Fiji swept all before them in winning the Oceania Sevens and are rightly favourites to win the gold medal again, but Japan finished fourth in Rio five years ago and beat New Zealand en route to the bronze medal play-off. Their prospects seem to have beewrongly downplayed and you’d still fancy them with such a large handicap.
Meanwhile, Argentina’s handicap has been cut from 7.5 points to 4.5 for their opening against Australia (5/6).
Los Pumas Sevens have been impressive in every tournament they have entered in the last 12 months, winning multiple titles along the way, and have a settled squad that is well-coached by Santiago Gomez Cora.
Also, let’s not forget that Argentina would have made it to the last Olympic semi-finals had it been them not eventual runners-up Great Britain who’d scored in sudden-death extra-time.
Australia on the other hand are in a bit of a state of flux and head coach Tim Walsh will do well to replicate the gold he won with the Aussie women’s team with the men.
Ireland, at +9.5 (4/5), were our other day one match picks once Paddy Power opened a book on the matches and that handicap mark has remained constant.
The Blitzboks don’t have the same stardust players they once had and will also have to contend without venerable head coach Neil Powell for the tournament after he tested positive for covid.
Having won the repechage in Monaco, Ireland have momentum behind them and are playing as if anything is possible at the moment.
In Jordan Conroy, they have the hottest try scorer in rugby sevens at present and we think they could run the Blitzboks a lot closer than 9.5 points.
