Victorious New Zealand women’s captain Huriana Manuel believes her side’s Sevens World Series win over South Africa is the first step for women’s rugby in New Zealand.
With the women’s game joining the Olympics in four years time, New Zealand have put together an ace programme looking to pull in the best possible players from around New Zealand.
On Saturday night the hard work paid off as Manuel led her team to a blistering 41-0 win over South Africa in an unbelievably one-sided final.
“This is the first step for us. We came here to develop but we came here and won but we’ll go forward from here, celebrate and then get our head down and move forward,” Manuel told Sport360°.
“[We] played amazing out there, our focus was on winning and that’s what we did. It was amazing out there to see all the support, not just for us but for the other countries too.
“I’ve been fortunate enough to experience something like this before but for our new girls it was something new. We just told them to suck it up and we focused on what we had to do and everything else was on the outside.”
Tyla Nathan-Wong was New Zealand’s top scorer in the game with 12 points but it was the totality of the win that was stunning. South Africa were barely able to get out of their own half for most of the game as New Zealand picked holes at will.
On the rare forays forward by South Africa, the Black Ferns quickly tackled and countered, most notably in the final minute. Nathan-Wong finished off a spectacular team move that started on virtually New Zealand’s own try line after Yolanda Meiring had streaked for South Africa.
Lavinia Gould set New Zealand off with a try inside three minutes, a try that went unconverted. Two minutes later Gould was sin-binned for rough play but the Black Ferns stayed compact, scoring again after nine minutes through Carla Hohepa before Gould converted.
If South Africa were hoping for a second half rally, their hopes were quickly quashed when Hohepa scored again. The dominance quickly turned into a rout when captain Huriana Manuel collected a pass from Kayla McAlister and ran over an easily converted try to put New Zealand 24-0 up.
Portia Woodman used her pace to run in a blistering try, and Nathan-Wong then pulled off a beautiful one-two with Hohepa to score easily before rounding off the game with a try with only a minute left.
“It was our last game and we wanted to empty the tank and leave nothing to “what ifs” and “maybes”. As you saw we emptied the tank and it was a great score,” said Manuel.
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