CAN ALL BLACKS SEVENS ATONE?

The men in black fell like dominoes. After years of preparation for the inaugural tournament at the 2016 Rio Games, with master sevens coach Sir Gordon Tietjens at the helm, the All Blacks sevens crumbled dramatically on their Olympic debut.

A shock 14-12 defeat in their opener against Japan, a team they walloped by more than 60 points two years earlier, was compounded when star 15s convert Sonny Bill Williams suffered a partial Achilles rupture.

Worse was to come. There were more injuries – to Joe Webber, Scott Curry and Lewis Ormond – and another defeat in the pool stage, 21-19 against Great Britain, meant the All Blacks sevens scraped into the quarterfinals as one of the best third-placed teams.

The pressure of an intense, disruptive campaign told when they faced old foes Fiji in the last eight.

The Kiwis cracked in the Rio heat, losing 12-7 in a controversial match, and finished an underwhelming fifth after starting the men’s tournament as one of the favourites.

The fallout led to Tietjens stepping down after 22 years of glittering success, but his tenure ended with a miserable failure at the game’s biggest event.

Five years later, including the 12-month delay because of the Covid-19 pandemic, and the All Blacks sevens can finally right the wrongs of Rio when their Olympic campaign in Tokyo begins with matches against South Korea and Argentina today.

Scotsman Clark Laidlaw, the coach since 2017, has eight new Olympians in his 12-man squad and surprisingly omitted All Black Caleb Clarke after his switch from 15s.

Co-captain Curry is one of four returnees from Rio, as well as Tim Mikkelson, Regan Ware and Webber, and having played more than 250 matches for the team, he said that disappointment lingers.

‘‘We definitely reflect and have to learn from Rio. That is what the Olympics are about and the different pressures that it brings,’’ Curry said.

Laidlaw said the lessons from Rio, and the added pressure of the Olympics, led to them picking more versatile players with greater experience of pinnacle events such as the Commonwealth Games and the Sevens World Cup.

That lack of versatility counted against Clarke and fellow 15s convert, Highlander Vilimoni Koroi, who are specialists on the wing and at playmaker, respectively.

‘‘I think the big thing with the Olympics is the pressure. It finds your weaknesses as an individual,’’ Laidlaw said.

‘‘That has certainly influenced how we’ve tried to build a team, how we train, keeping these guys under pressure.

‘‘That flexibility within the group is really important. You’ve got only 13 [with one injury reserve] and it could be 40 degrees with 80 per cent humidity [in Tokyo].’’

It was a particularly strong, bold call to omit Clarke, who was superb for the All Blacks last year, but sevens is a different ball game – fast,

frenetic, played on a chaotic knifeedge – and the All Blacks sevens are banking on more of their players who were consistent performers in the World Series before it was shut down last March.

Laidlaw, having led New Zealand to glory at the Commonwealth Games and the World Cup in 2018, has successful experience of preparing his team to peak when it matters. Also, nine of the Tokyo 12 played in either of those successes in 2018.

The Olympics will be the ultimate test, albeit under the cloud of Covid19.

The men’s tournament is hard to predict because of a lack of sevens during the pandemic.

The All Blacks sevens, who led the last World Series, have a tough pool with Australia and Argentina but are among the favourites with Olympic champions Fiji, who got the better of them, twice, in the final warmup event in Townsville in June.