The All Blacks Sevens and NZ Women Sevens teams trained at Blake Park yesterday in preparation for the Rugby World Cup Sevens to be held in Moscow from June 28-30.
The men trained under the watchful eye of Sir Gordon Tietjens and impressed with the quality of their drills, particularlythe speed and lack of mistakes. It was a highly impressive performance by the world series winners who will arrive in Russia as one of the favourites to take the title.
The women's squad went through their paces under former Steamers coach Sean Horan at the Tauranga Hockey Centre next door. The players enjoyed training on the new hockey turfs and all warm-up pitches at Moscow's Olympic Stadium are similar artificial turf.
Tauranga Hockey Association general manager Clyde du Toit says one of the key aspects of getting the new turfs funded was to enable other sporting codes to use the facility as well as hockey.
"It is great we have the New Zealand women's sevens team here and I have had discussions with Waikato-Bay of Plenty Football to see if there is an opportunity for them to use the facilities when we are not making use of them," du Toit said.
"One of the advantages we have here is if it is raining it does not make a difference because we want water on the turf. So in our down time when we don't have our peak hockey going on, it allows other sporting codes to approach us and see if they can use the facility.
"That is really good for the community and really good for other sporting codes."
The new turfs have been a massive success since they opened in April.
Currently 2200 players are in action at the hockey centre every week in the midweek and weekend leagues. The high standard of lighting has enabled evening hockey to take place that has quickly become a favourite with school students in particular.
