Festival of Rugby: Pirates women's coach encouraged by first hit out

The reigning New England premiers had their first hit-out for the season at the Santos Festival of Rugby, playing the Narrabri women as part of the 7s action on the Friday.

It provided a glimpse into what will be a "different squad" with several notable departures.

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While she did play on Friday, Claudia Nielsen is moving to Sydney.

After COVID put her plans on hold last year Phoebe McLoughlin has meanwhile moved to the Gold Coast and will play for Bond University in the Queensland Premier Cup. She has also been selected in the Bond squad for the upcoming AON Uni 7s.

Amy Raphael and Abi Murray have also moved away.

Barbara admits that experience will be hard to replace but said they do still have a nucleus of players that have been around the set-up for a few years and have some exciting young talent coming through from the under-18s.

"With the juniors coming through I'm really looking forward to them progressing," he said.

Tyanna Kerr and Sherri-Anne Sands both stepped on Friday and Barbara thought "played really well".

"Those two were very impressive for their first games," he said.

Kerr particularly, he predicts, will be a player to watch for them.

It was overall a really promising start, looking anything but a side that had only had a few training runs together.

"For our first hit-out it was quite encouraging to see the girls play so well with a few new faces and a few old faces," Barbara said.

Olivia Rutledge was another of the 'new' faces. She comes from a touch background, and he thought played well for her first game.

"She wasn't afraid of the contact," he said.

They shared centre stage alongside the Aussie men and the NSW, Queensland and Australian Pacific 7s sides, and Barbara said it was a great experience for them.

"They really enjoyed watching the men's sides play," he said.

"For the girls to sit down and watch they took a lot out of it."

It is in his view the best way to learn.

The 16s girls were also involved in the community tournament on the Saturday, and made a similarly strong start winning all three of their games.

They were in between also lucky enough to learn some tricks of the trade from Australian men's coaches Tim Walsh and Nathan Grey with the pair running a coaching clinic for the junior girls sides.

Looking ahead to the season Barbara spoke about really just consolidating on how they played last year.

"The girls took a lot of confidence from last year," he said.

"Sevens is all about evading people, and about using the ball and playing with width and playing with speed."