'It's mistakes, isn't it?' - James Topping sums up Ireland's quarter-final defeat in sevens

Ireland head coach James Topping was left to bemoan a series of errors as the team's quest for silverware in the sevens competition came to an end in a 19-15 loss to defending champions Fiji at the Stade de France on Thursday night.

Topping's troops were seeded to play a side with a perfect Olympic winning streak of 16, which stretches back to the introduction of the sport at Rio 2016, after coming up just short against New Zealand this afternoon.

There were parallels between both performances, with the wayward boot of Mark Roche evident once more. The scrum-half missed all three of his conversions attempts in the team's second loss of the day, while a number of handling errors also served to sabotage the podium hopes of a side second in the world rankings.

Topping had little doubt over how the game was decided, telling RTÉ Sport after the final whistle in Paris: "It's mistakes, isn't it? It's a game of errors, sevens, as opposed to 15-a-side where there might not be many errors.

"We had a couple of kick-offs and we missed one of them. Ball hits the ground and they pick it up and that's what Fiji do - they're very good off scraps.

"We tried to control the ball and keep possession, but if the ball hits the ground or is a bit loose, those guys are all over it and that's the game they play. They can just pick the ball up and they're gone, they've all got such individual talent.

"It's tough, we can only do it for so long. We're going to maybe make three or four mistakes in the game and Fiji have the ability to score off all those mistakes.

"We maybe struggled on that side of it the way we play, but as you can see by the scoreline we still put them under pressure."

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