The Australian women’s sevens team face a difficult quarter-final clash with undefeated England on Friday after a disappointing first day of the Dubai Sevens.
The reigning Olympic and World Series champions got off to a sluggish start in warm conditions in the desert going down 26-12 to England in their opening match on Thursday.
They bounced back to defeat China in their second game 33-5 before losing a thrilling final clash with USA 22-17, the Eagles scoring on the last play in front of a boisterous crowd of 17,861.
The two losses meant Australia qualified for the Cup quarter-finals as the best third place team in the three pools setting them up to meet Pool B winners England again on Friday (1644 AEDT).
Despite just one win on the opening day Australian coach John Manenti saw some promising signs going into day two.
“A couple of decisions defensively hurt us and that’s the difference between winning and losing big games,” he said.
“We’ve got a lot of confidence out of that (USA) game even though we loss and we’re really looking forward to bouncing back against England.
“I’m confident that as we’ve improved throughout the day we have done things better. We’re still learning with a young side.
“In that (final) game we executed exactly how we wanted to play so now it’s rest up and bounce back tomorrow.”
The 2016 Olympic gold medallists travelled to Dubai missing three of their stars from Rio – Emilee Cherry, Emma Tonegato and Shannon Parry.
It was left to the remaining senior players including 2016 World Rugby Sevens players of the year Charlotte Caslick and captain Sharni Williams to lead the young team featuring two debutants – 17-year-old Sariah Paki and 18-year-old Lily Dick.
“Although we didn’t get the win against USA we finished pretty well,” said Caslick.
“We felt pretty good out there still and we made a little bit of improvement on our defence from the first game against England, so there are a lot of positives to take out of it.
“We get to play England again tomorrow morning so hopefully we rectify that result.”
After the final match Manenti reminded his team of what happened in the last tournament in Colorado.
“I said to the girls it’s all about day two,” he said. “We saw at the last tournament America scraped in to the eight by a point and knocked us off first thing the next morning and then went to the final.
“I’m very confident that if we play like we have today for bits and pieces then we can have a good day tomorrow.”
In the other Cup quarter-finals the New Zealand Black Ferns will take on Russia, USA play France and Canada face surprise packets Ireland.
