Women’s Aussie7s kick off title defence with winning start in Dubai
The Qantas Australian Women’s Sevens team has won all three of its day one matches at the Dubai Rugby Sevens Championship accounting for South Africa, Russia and the USA in hard fought contests.
Australia topped pool A on 9 points and will play France in the Cup Quarter Finals at 10.06 local time (5.06pm AEDT) on Friday 2 December with the Finals matches to be broadcast LIVE on FOX SPORTS.
Qantas Australian Women’s Sevens Head Coach Tim Walsh: “We are very happy to get the wins against strong opposition and we showed some great desire to get the results we did.
“We got a bit of a wake-up call against some of those teams that took it to us, which will do us good moving forward into day two.
“I think France will be incredibly tough. The Quarter Finals is the match that can make or break your tournament so we will need to be switched on to get the result.”
Australia 38 defeated South Africa 5
A six-try effort by the Australians including three tries to Emma Tonegato kicked off their Dubai tournament defence in emphatic fashion against South Africa. Returning to the Women’s Sevens Series, South Africa were outclassed by the Olympic Gold medallists, as Australia put on a display of clinical Sevens Rugby.
Australia 20 defeated Russia 7
Alicia Quirk opened the scoring for Australia after a powerful run from Mahalia Murphy in the opening stanza for the Women in Gold but from then on, the match became a battle with Russia using great line speed to hamper the Aussies ‘attacks.
With the score at 10-7 in favour of Australia at half time, Russia continued to mount huge amounts of pressure on Australia, testing the Aussies at the breakdown and forcing errors. With the game on a knife’s edge Australia found the try line through Alicia Quirk and had enough experience to finish the game with a 20-7 lead.
Australia 19 defeated USA 10
Emilee Cherry scored for Australia off the kickoff, darting and weaving through several USA tackles to give her team a 7-0 lead. The US countered with a try of their own with the Aussie7s defending with five players with best friends Tiana Penitani and Brook Anderson going down injured in the same play. The injury to Penitani halted play for several minutes with concern being shown for the young Sydneysider who had to be taken from the field.
Both sides traded a try each heading into the break leaving Australia with a slender 12-10 lead at the interval. As both nations traded blows, looking to get the winning edge, it came to the Aussie 7s through Mahalia Murphy who powered her way through the US defence to take Australia’s lead to 19-10.
Australia will continue its Dubai Sevens defence with the Cup Quarter Final against France on Day 2.
HSBC Sevens World Series, Dubai, Day 1 results:
Australia 38-5 South Africa
Australia 20-7 Russia
Australia 19-10 USA
HSBC Dubai Sevens, Cup Quarter Finals:
New Zealand v South Africa
Canada v Russia
Fiji v England
Australia v France
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