Future sevens tournaments would be a welcome addition to Cooks Gardens events if the Mars Petcare Women's Under-19 rugby sevens finals were any indication on Friday night.
While a couple of the five teams were short on players and had to share numbers, the games were still solid entertainment consideringthe players have only been engaged in three Tuesday night warm-up tournaments complete with a booming soundtrack of dance and rap songs on the public address system.
At times it seemed the crowd, containing a number of high school aged young men, seemed more excited by the hard tackles and solid cleanouts at the ruck than they were enamoured with the runaway tries.
The final game was also a fitting climax as Ruapehu College came back for a first up loss to upset clear favourites Wanganui High School, holding on in the dying minutes to win 12-10.
WHS had beaten Ruapehu 10-0 in their first up game, although the country team had the better share of territory but let slip two break-out five-pointers.
Given Wanganui Girls College and the Combined team made up of players from smaller Wanganui schools had depleted rosters, organisers decided to move the final ahead a little earlier with both WHS and Ruapehu the clear two top teams.
Ruapehu opened the scoring in the first 90 seconds from close range, and landed a crucial conversion as goal kicking was not really any team's forte that evening.
After a series of free kicks, WHS replied with a try in the corner but would have been nervous at 7-5 down at the break as no team behind at halftime went on to win during the tournament.
Ruapehu appeared to wrap it up when they broke away from a scrum on halfway to score, but they were penalised in front of the kickoff and WHS dashed to the line from a tap kick almost immediately.
It made for a thrilling finish as WHS attacked Ruapehu's line continuously in the final moments, but were tackled out in the corners and then dropped the ball, letting Ruapehu hang on.
"That's sevens, if you haven't got the ball and you're defending, it's hard," said Ruapehu's helper Thomas Waara.
He was pleased the team had picked themselves up from their first encounter with WHS that night.
"A couple of mistakes, the girls sort of learned from that. It was a job well done."
Waara said the team, consisting of players in Year 9-13, had pretty much looked after themselves by getting each other to the Tuesday night tournaments to learn the game.
