This year's Greytown Rugby Club's sevens tournament will be a multi-festival of the oval ball game.
Sponsored by Fresh Choice it will be held at the club's East Street grounds on Saturday, March 1 and there will be one major addition to a programme which traditionally attracts teams from allover the lower and central North Island.
Making its debut will be a women's grade and to this end Greytown Rugby Club have invited any prospective female players to attend a training run tonight to familiarise themselves with the requirements of the sevens game.
Lending her full support to this initiative is Wairarapa-Bush Rugby Union board member and former London Wasps centre Catherine Rossiter-Stead who is optimistic of having 10 players line up in a South Wairarapa team which will be coached by Tavita Isaac, the prolific-scoring winger for Greytown's premier men's side which won both the Chris Kapene Memorial Cup and Tui Cup competitions on the local club scene in 2013.
"What more do you want out of a sport?" asks Rossiter-Stead. "Sevens is fast, high-scoring and uses great strategy, and besides it's just simply a lot of fun. Now that women's sevens is included in the Olympics, why wouldn't you give it a try?"
Rossiter-Stead said most young Kiwis had experienced the excitement of touch rugby and sevens simply meant developing those skills a little bit further, with the possibility of being able to go for gold at the Olympics in Japan 2020 .
"Olympics aside, the Greytown tournament is a great opportunity for women who might not even have played any form of rugby but are keen to have a go," Rossiter-Stead said.
Tonight's training session will get under way at 6.30pm.
