Australia sevens "courageous captain" Lewis Holland has saved his team from Olympic Games qualification disaster, scoring in the last minute to secure a ticket to Tokyo next year.
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The Australian men's team had to come from behind to earn Olympic selection at a tournament in Fiji on Saturday, beating Samoa 19-12 in a tense Oceania final showdown.
It guarantees them a place at the Olympics, but coach Tim Walsh's heart was in his mouth for most of the contest after Samoa jumped to an unexpected lead.
The loser would have faced an uncertain road to Tokyo, forced to wait until June to play in the last-chance global qualification repechage in June next year.
Queanbeyan junior Holland was the one who stepped up when it mattered most, charging down a kick and winning the race for the ball to score the match-winning try.
"It's a bit of a relief, I guess," Holland said. "The last three months have been building towards this moment because we didn't get there through the world series.
"This was the second hurdle ... to get that game out of the way is a really big relief. The last three months everyone has pushed themselves."
Australia dominated in the opening rounds of the tournament, conceding just one try and scoring a combined 201 points in the first four games.
It put them in a perfect position to clinch an Olympic spot, and things looked like they would go to plan when Samoa had a player sin-binned just 15 seconds into the final.
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The wet conditions proved to be the equaliser and Samoa jumped to a 12-0 half-time lead.
Australia had to dig deep, finally getting on the board via Henry Hutchison and then leveling when Lachlan Anderson scored not long after.
Holland missed the kick to go in front, but then pulled off a moment of brilliance to seal Olympic qualification.
"We've trained with sloppy balls, with wet jerseys, so we were prepared for that game. We held our composure and we showed that," Holland said.
"Four years flies by. Off the back of that performance and the last three months, I think we're in a good place. We're looking forward to it, we can really put Tokyo in our sights and take the world series on full tilt."
The sevens side added Melbourne Rebels star Jack Maddocks and Brumbies flanker Tom Cusack to their squad to secure qualification, with both hoping to juggle Super Rugby and Olympic dreams next year.
Coach Walsh led the Australian women's side to an Olympic gold medal in Rio three years ago and is hoping to have the same touch with the men's.
Walsh said he could "tear up" the back-up plan of having to qualify in June, with all preparations now geared towards the Olympics.
"The [players] are ecstatic, I'm ecstatic ... there was a lot of pressure building up in the last three months and the rain comes pouring down [in the last game]," Walsh said.
"But preparation breeds confidence, that rang true today. Lewi Holland, courageous captain, and we were really disciplined. That was probably the difference.
"We were composed. Samoa were outstanding, they took it to us physically and they owned us there. We had our tactics how to nullify that, but the big play was around the discipline."