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.
DaniE
Guest
Terrific stuff from the Wallaroos - I thought they looked bloody good, considering they would not be professional sevens players. The rest of the tournament was good too - the sevens circuit looks like a whole lot of fun.
Blinky Bill of Bellingen
Guest
Cheers Shahsan - I've got a few irons in the fire that may just bring me a few bucks. If it does then I can't help but feel that despite me really enjoying the social aspect of watching Rugby at the pub, Austar in my own lounge room is the way to go.
Shahsan
Guest
Yes, Blinky, Foxsports showed the whole thing live. Great coverage and i think the weekend's Super 14 games were scheduled to enable the tournament to be screened live. Only the very end was delayed to accomodate the Bulls vs Stormers game. But the 12noon wrap the next day covered the same ground. So well done, Fox Sports. And well done to the Australian girls. Brilliant show. The men, however, were represented by a very raw team. But considering that sevens has helped the likes of O'Connor, Rob Horne etc come through then it serves a good purpose. Still i would love to see a full-strength Wallabies team, perhaps something like this?: Mortlock, Smith, Elsom, Pocock in the pack and Burgess/Giteau at scrumhalf, and Giteau/Quade Cooper at playmaker, and finishers in Gerard, Ashley-Cooper, Ioane, Hynes. And O'Connor too of course.
Blinky Bill of Bellingen
Guest
Shahsan - How did you get to watch it? Fox / Austras I presume. I've already said a well done on another site. But will again say congratulations. Job well done.
True Tah
Guest
Well done ladies maybe they can show the mens team how to win!
Shahsan
Guest
I watched this match -- the whole tournament, in fact -- and enjoyed it immensely. the standard of play was very high, with good option taking, high skills level, good sportsmanship and very good refereeing. So would this bucnch of winners be the same girls that the ARU stopped funding a few years ago?