Beijing throw rugby sevens match

The 12th Chinese National Games were rocked by a scandal on Tuesday after the Beijing women’s rugby sevens team threw their rugby sevens final against the Shandong team in protest against controversial refereeing in Shenyang, Northeast China’s Liaoning Province.

Beijing had been widely considered favorites to win the gold, but Shandong scored two tries to quickly gain 10 points soon after the start of the match.

The game finished at 71-0.

The astonishing score was the result of the Beijing team giving up the match at the second half.

The seven players formed a ring on the field and did nothing despite Shandong’s continued attack as the scoreboard showed 15-0.

With little over five minutes to go, the Beijing team began insisting the referee’s judgments were “wrong” and that there had been a fault before Shandong reached the end zone with their third touchdown, so Beijing should be ­awarded a free kick.

Shandong expanded their lead ­during this time, while Beijing’s head coach ­Jiang Xuming, shouted “Change the ­referee and then we will go on ­playing” at the dugout.

But the jury committee made an announcement after the match, saying the referee, who comes from Spain, made the right decisions which were “accurate and fair,” and the Beijing side played “negatively.”

Liu Jingchao, a sports reporter with the Shenyang-based Chinese Business Morning News newspaper, said on his Sina Weibo after the match, “Most of the Beijing players wanted to continue to play, and some of them even cried when the head coach decided to throw the match.”

Luo Le, a sports commentator with the Hunan-based Titan Sports ­news­paper, said that the Beijing team had made the wrong choice.

“Sports games are doing their best to become fairer, even though in sports there is no absolute level of fairness. ­Refusing to play a game is just conducting themselves in a manner which is abusive to the sport itself and goes against the spirit of sports,” Luo told the Global Times.

Xu Jiren, head of sports at the ­Xinhua News Agency, said on his Sina ­Weibo, “We cannot ignore the incentives ­involved in the scandal while at the same time criticizing the players for throwing the match.

“We also cannot ignore such spirit-violating behaviors in sports as there might be something unfair.”

The women’s rugby sevens games at the National Games saw only six teams competing for the gold medal. Aside from Shandong and Beijing, the teams included Anhui, Jiangsu, Hong Kong and the hosts Liaoning.

Rugby sevens is now recognized as an Olympic sport and will make its debut in the 2016 Summer Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil.

via Beijing throw rugby sevens match – SPORTS – Globaltimes.cn.