Scotland turned several promising performances from day one
into a 19-10 win over the USA in the Bowl Quarter Final – Photo: IRB/Martin Seras Lima

by Brendan Bradford on the Gold Coast –

New Zealand, England, Australia and South Africa to contest Cup semi-finals.

Scotland beat USA in the first Bowl quarter-final before Canada – who were unlucky not to make the Cup competition after Wales upset Fiji yesterday in the Pool rounds – easily accounted for Spain 29-5. Scotland and Canada will play in the Bowl semi, while the USA and Spain play-off in the Shield semi-final.

Argentina trailed 5-0 for most of their quarter-final against Tonga before second-half tries to Diego Palmer and Franco Sabato looked to have earned the South Americans a 12-5 win. A late Selu Vailea try levelled the scores as the fulltime siren sounded but a brilliant 70-meter solo effort by Axel Muller down the left wing clinched the win for Argentina.

France beat Portugal 26-14 in the last Bowl quarter-final to set up a semi-final match with Argentina.

A Tim Mikkelson hat-trick left him as the competition’s leading try scorer after the Quarter-Finals stage
Photo: IRB/Martin Seras Lima

New Zealand continued in impressive fashion steamrolling Samoa 40-0 in their Cup quarter-final with Tim Mikkelson bagging a hat-trick to leapfrog teammate Joe Webber as the Tournament top try-scorer.

“He snuck in there, the punk!” said Webber after the match.

“I’ll try to get back at him next game, but it’s not really about the individual stuff.”

The six try win is the fourth match in succession New Zealand has kept an opposition from conceding points.

“We really take pride in our defence and we work on that a lot in training and we just try and do the hard stuff well and I guess that’s defence,” said Webber.

England knocked defending Gold Coast champions Fiji out of the Cup competition with a dominant 26-5 win to make a Cup semi-final date with New Zealand. An out of sorts Fiji face Samoa in the Plate semi.

Australia turned out their best half of the tournament so far to overcome a 12-7 halftime deficit and beat Kenya 24-12 to advance to the Cup semi-finals.

“It was a tough game, the Kenyans are very big and strong, but we did well to match them today,” said Con Foley after the match.

“We just tried to keep doing the things we’d been practising and that have been working for us. We were pretty happy with it yesterday, but today we improved again.”

Australia will play South Africa who held off a second half Welsh comeback in the last quarter-final of the day. Wales twice leveled the scores, first 14-14 then 21-21 in the second half before Steven Hunt scored under the posts with 20-seconds left on the clock to steal the game for the BlitzBokke.

Quarter-Final Results:

QF Bowl – USA 10 – 19 Scotland

QF Bowl – Canada 29 – 5 Spain

QF Bowl – Argentina 17 – 12 Tonga

QF Bowl – France 26 – 14 Portugal

QF Cup – New Zealand 40 – 0 Samoa

QF Cup – Fiji 12 – 26 England

QF Cup – Australia 24 – 12 Kenya

QF Cup – South Africa 28 – 21 Wales

Semi-Finals:

Shield – USA v Spain, Tonga v Portugal

Bowl – Scotland v Canada, Argentina v France

Plate – Samoa v Fiji, Kenya v Wales

Cup – New Zealand v England, Australia v South Africa