The Central North women's 7s development squad showed they can match it with some of the top Sydney club sides at the Mick "Whale" Curry Memorial Rugby Sevens on Saturday.
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The Kookaburras defeated Gordon emphatically and went toe-to-toe with a Sydney University side featuring former Pirates star Claudia Nielsen after making it through to the semi-finals.
For their first tournament playing together, co-coach Dale Beattie said he couldn't be happier with how the side performed.
"The standard of play was really high but our performance was great," he said.
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Their only round loss was against Southern Districts, who beat Sydney Uni in extra-time to make it back-to-back tournament wins.
"Southern Districts' their line speed was something else. It was really good for our girls to play that style," Beattie said.
They couldn't have wished for a better start putting Gordon "to the sword" in a 43-nil opening game blitz.
"We didn't let them come up for air to be honest," he said.
After going down to Southern Districts, they prevailed in "a tough game" 22-12 over Hamilton to secure a semi-final spot.
"It was a great win for us because it was a come-from-behind one," Beattie said.
"It was 12-7 at one stage. We got it back to 12-all at half-time and then kind of pulled away in the second half."
They then actually led Sydney Uni 12-nil at half-time in their semi after producing what Beattie described as a nearly perfect first half.
But down to only 10 players the "fatigue factor kicked in in the second half" and the students' went on to take the win 26-12.
Beattie said for their only losses to be against the calibre of Southern Districts and Sydney Uni was a fantastic effort especially considering a lot of the side don't have a lot of experience playing in women's tournaments.
"We're going to be better for it, that tournament," he said.
One of the big work-ons is their kick restarts. They got put under a lot of pressure from the top teams being unable to secure their ball.
On the other of things, he was really impressed with their attack and support play.
Unfortunately they won't be able to build on their effort this weekend, learning on Sunday that the Lake Macquarie tournament they had been planning to play in has been cancelled.
They'll have a training run now instead, in readiness for the Cresent Head 7s the following weekend.
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