Wales and the United States set the Australian round of the IRB Sevens series alight in the opening round with shock wins over Fiji and England here Friday.
Tournament favourites New Zealand and Samoa safely negotiated their way through their first matches but elsewhere the form book was thrown away.
A stirring second-half performance by Wales, who languish a lowly ninth on the championship table, produced a 17-12 win over regular sevens high-flyers third-ranked Fiji.
The match started according to the script with Fiji scoring twice early to take a 12-0 lead and a runaway win seemed a formality.
But Justin Tipuric brought Wales into the action with a try on half-time and Chris Morgan and Darren Daniel scored soon after the resumption to give Wales a five-point lead which they clung to in a desperate closing four minutes.
The 11th-ranked United States then turned a 17-7 half-time into a 24-21 victory over England, who lie fourth on the table.
Championship leaders and seven-times World Series winners New Zealand kept their scoreline intact when they beat Scotland 31-0 in a five-try romp after leading 19-0 at half-time and finishing with two players in the sin-bin.
New Zealand, who have won two of the four tournaments so far in this series, see their strongest opposition coming from Samoa, who won the recent Las Vegas leg.
But Samoa were made to struggle for much of their game against France and only led 14-7 at half-time before racing away at the end to a 33-12 win.
France scored first in both halves but had no answer to the pace out wide of the Samoans, where Mikaele Pesamino, the series-leading try scorer, touched down twice to raise his tally for the season to 30.
Host nation Australia, hoping their home-soil advantage will spur them to their first title in eight years, started their campaign with an easy 40-5 win over Niue.
Other first round matches saw Argentina beat Tonga 19-17, South Africa beat Japan 40-0 and sentimental crowd favourites Kenya posted a 27-7 win over Papua New Guinea.
Copyright 2010 AFP American Edition
