Australia beat New Zealand 15-10 to claim the inaugural women’s title at the Rugby World Cup Sevens tournament here on Saturday.
Australia, who had beaten New Zealand twice in the qualifiers for the women’s RWC Sevens, outscored their neighbours by three unconverted tries to two in a sudden death finale.
“It’s just amazing. We have worked so hard to get here and to come here and achieve this is just mammoth,” said Australian captain Cheryl Soon.
“We believed in each other and we just knew we had to stick it out for the whole 20 minutes or however long. We just knew we could do it in the end.”
Nicole Beck opened the scoring for Australia, jinking around Carla Hohepa to touch down in the corner.
Debby Hodgkinson then showed great power and determination to step inside one defender and ride Victoria Grant’s covering tackle to ground the ball over the Kiwi line to hand the Australians a 10-0 lead.
New Zealand, however, took immediate advantage of the sin-binning of Rebecca Tavo to hit back either side of half-time with tries from Justine Lavea and Hohepa – her ninth of the competition.
Selica Winiata went close to a third Kiwi try but was foiled in her bid to latch onto her grubber kick through by Tricia Brown.
Lavea was then called back after Tobie McGann was adjudged to have impeded Hohepa in her attempt to get back for a tackle.
After 40 seconds of sudden death with the score tied at 10 points apiece, Australia forced a turnover deep in Kiwi territory and Shelly Matcham rode two tackles to crash over in the corner.
England, who lost 17-10 to Australia in the quarter-finals, beat Canada 12-0 to claim the Plate trophy, while China beat Brazil 10-7 to win the Bowl.
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