Hong Kong was knocked out of the women’s rugby sevens Olympic repechage tournament in Dublin at the pool stage on Saturday, losing to Argentina and Kazakhstan and drawing with Cook Islands on day one to finish third in pool D.

It was a tough end for Hong Kong, who entered its last match with Argentina needing to win to progress, before falling agonizingly short 17-15.

Hong Kong looked to have the match in the bag leading by five points late in the game, but an Argentina try and conversion in the final minute ended the women’s squad’s journey on the road to Rio.

Chong Ka-yan scored twice and Aggie Poon Pak-yan once, while Natasha Olson-Thorne was desperate throughout.

“It was a bit of a heartbreaker,” Hong Kong coach Anna Richards said.“I thought we had done enough to get through, but that’s what Sevens is like.”

Hong Kong now plays Zimbabwe in the quarter-final of the Challenge Cup [kick-off at 17.44 in Hong Kong] and Richards hopes her side can perform to expectations on day two of the tournament.

“Our realistic aim is to finish ninth,” she said. “We want to win the bottom half of the draw now given we didn’t make the quarter-finals.”

Hong Kong’s first match, which it was expected to win, ended in a 12-12 draw against an unknown Cook Islands side.

Hong Kong’s first try came from Poon and Olson-Thorne also scored to set up a 12-7 half-time lead, but the team’s inability to score in the second half proved costly.

Hong Kong suffered a slow start in its second match against a powerful Kazakhstan side that came ready to play, conceding two early tries before mounting a promising rally that ultimately came too late to prevent the 21-12 loss.

14-5 down at the half with Nam Ka-man the try scorer, Hong Kong trailed by as much as 16 points in the second period before Candy Cheng Tsz-Ting try trimmed the final margin.

Nam picked up what could be a heavy injury against Kazakhstan, reducing Hong Kong to eleven players against Argentina.

“We focused on starting well against Argentina, which I think we did, we did well getting Chong over but then we panicked a little bit and didn’t keep hold of the ball as well as we should have,” Richards said.

China got its pool play off to a flying start with a convincing 24-5 win over Portugal and carried on its good form in game two, crushing minnows Trinidad and Tobago 34-5.It lost its final game against Ireland 12-0 but did enough to set up a quarter-final hit-out against Spain.

Russia topped pool A, Spain went undefeated in pool B, Ireland was the pick in pool C and Kazakhstan and Argentina progress in Hong Kong’s pool. Argentina will face Russia in its Championship quarter-final, while Kazakhstan takes on Samoa and Ireland faces off with Tunisia in the other brackets.