It was another busy day in Birmingham. Hayden Meikle wraps up some of the action.
Rugby sevens
An annus horribilis for New Zealand rugby?
The All Blacks have imploded on and off the field, the Black Ferns have been through a coaching change debacle, the Crusaders won again, and now both sevens teams have failed to win Commonwealth Games gold.
It is not "a failure" as such, but there is no doubt neither team fancied leaving Birmingham with any medal other than gold.
The All Blacks Sevens sort of had themselves to blame for a 19-14 golden-point loss to Fiji in the semifinals.
They were in complete command at 14-0 as the hooter sounded for halftime. Then, just as the helpful commentator pointed out there was not much point doing something risky ... they did something risky.
Fiji swooped on an intercept to make it 14-7 at the break, and made it 14-14 with a couple of minutes to play.
The New Zealanders then had two players sent to the bin and, while they defended heroically with five men until the end of normal time, they weirdly chose to kick to Fiji at the start of golden point.
The Fijians promptly ran 90m to score the winning try.
In the bronze final, the All Blacks Sevens comfortably beat Australia 26-12. Fiji was hammered 31-7 by South Africa in the final.
Having been knocked out of the semifinals a day earlier, the Black Ferns Sevens beat Canada 19-12 in an underwhelming women’s bronze medal game. Australia downed Fiji 22-12 in the final.
It is not yet certain if the sevens teams’ performances in Birmingham are "unacceptable" in the eyes of New Zealand Rugby bosses.
Hockey
The Black Sticks men remained unbeaten with a 4-1 win over Pakistan.
Otago star Hugo Inglis scored twice for the Kiwis, who face mighty rival Australia at 8am today.
Twelve hours later, the Black Sticks women also play Australia.
Squash
New Zealand’s two big guns are sailing into the semifinals.
Paul Coll actually made a slightly average start to his game yesterday before beating Emyr Evans (Wales) 8-11, 11-0, 11-5, 12-10.
Joelle King cruised to an 11-3, 11-5, 11-5 win over Georgia Adderley (Scotland).
3x3 basketball
Both the men and the women are in medal contention.
The 3x3 Tall Ferns completed a perfect record in pool play with a 19-5 win over the British Virgin Islands. They are straight into the semifinals to play either Canada or Scotland at 8.30am today.
Former Otago Goldrush player Jillian Harmon has a rare double-double (10 points and 12 rebounds) against the Virgin Islands, and is the competition’s leading scorer at 8.3 points per game. Ella Fotu leads the competition in blocks (two per game).
The 3x3 Tall Blacks rebounded from two opening losses to beat Trinidad & Tobago 21-12. They were playing Canada in a quarterfinal overnight, the winner to play England.
Tai Wynyard grabbed eight points and eight rebounds yesterday, and Dom Kelman-Poto had six and eight.
Bowls
Katelyn Inch was beaten 21-16 by Lucy Beere (Guernsey) in a women’s singles quarterfinal.
The women’s four beat Botswana 17-13 in the quarterfinals and were playing India in the semifinals last night.
Otago bowler Pam Walker and partner Lynda Bennett completed their campaign in the para women’s pairs with a 25-8 loss to South Africa.
