The Paris Olympics have not officially opened yet but the All Blacks Sevens side is already out of medal contention.
The best the New Zealand men can now finish is fifth after being knocked out by South Africa 14-7 in the quarterfinals at Stade de France on Thursday night (Friday NZ Time), again coming up short of their gold medal goal.
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With the pressure on, New Zealand made too many errors, especially in the first half, when they essentially gifted the Blitz Bokke a 14-0 lead.
South Africa began strongly when Selvyn Davids scored after four minutes. Worse followed three minutes later when Davids, who had a tremendous game, kicked the ball downfield, regathered and handed a pass to Tristan Leyds, who dotted down.
The ABs Sevens kept themselves in the game with a try in the final play of the first half. Two minutes into added-time, Moses Leo sprinted down the left to score, with Akuila Rokolisoa's conversion making it 14-7 at the break.
New Zealand could make no progress in the second half and in fact it was South Africa who went closest to scoring when Shilton van Wyk knocked on over the New Zealand line.
There was a moment of hope when Rokolisoa looked likely to score but was brought down by frantic South African defence, while Tony Ng Shiu and Leroy Carter also were stopped just short of the line.
It was a disappointing result for New Zealand, the silver medallists at Tokyo three years ago. They went into this event ranked third in the world to South Africa’s seventh and beat the Blitz Bokke 17-5 in pool play 24 hours earlier.
Earlier on Thursday, New Zealand pulled off a great escape in their final pool match, beating Ireland 14-12 to top the pool.
Needing a victory to avoid meeting Fiji in the quarterfinals, New Zealand found themselves down 12-0 at halftime, but converted tries by Leroy Carter and, just before fulltime, Ngarohi McGarvey-Black got them home.
New Zealand captain Dylan Collier seemed stunned after the South Africa game.
"It's extremely disappointing," he said. "Especially after the way we started the tournament. We gave them a head start in the first half and they did well to hang on."
Collier felt his team had not executed their skills well enough.
"We were on D [defence] for long periods, but still had our chances, right up to the last lineout of the game. There's no doubt this one hurts a lot."
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