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Gold Rush: Sevens' success sparks rugby revolution
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The Australian women’s rugby sevens team is about to defend its World Series crown in Dubai, and the Olympic Gold medalists have warmed up by winning the Oceania Sevens in Fiji. While there, they’ve witnessed first-hand the women’s rugby revolution that is underway in the Pacific.

A normally-restrained, sensibly-dressed, middle-aged Fijian women is almost shuddering with excitement. Eyes darting, scanning the horizon, she smiles nervously, shifting from one foot to the other, repeatedly reassuring herself: 'they are on their way, they are on their way'.

This emotion, normally reserved for the likes of Bieber or the Beatles, is in anticipation of the arrival of the Australian sevens rugby team. Not the men. They have already been given a warm welcome to Veiuto Primary School on the waterfront in Suva and are sitting patiently in an assembly area.

The buzz is for the Olympic gold medallists, the Australian women’s sevens rugby team. And when they arrive, a wall of smiles, giggles and occasional gasps welcomes them.

“Everyone knows who we are,” says Australian seven co-captain Shannon Parry, still with a hint of surprise in her voice.

“Our world has definitely changed from Rio. It is getting women’s sport out there and especially women’s rugby. For us, it has opened a lot of doors which is positive.”

Co-captain Sharni Williams wears the title “role model” proudly, and increasingly comfortably.

“I guess we didn’t know how much we were going to influence the younger generation,’ she says.

“Just changing the stereotype, that’s a massive thing. Anyone can do anything. Don’t sit back and think ‘I shouldn’t be doing that because I am a woman'." - Australian co-captain Sharni Williams

That message has been received. The recent rise of women’s rugby is a global phenomenon but nowhere more so than Fiji.

Here, so the cliché goes, rugby is a religion. The Pacific nation partied like never before when its men’s sevens team claimed Fiji’s historic first gold medal in Rio. But this religion has not always welcomed all followers.

There is a widely-circulated, but apparently apocryphal, story that only 150 women were consistently playing sevens rugby across the Fiji islands as recently as last year.

Officially, the records show Fiji had 3,000 women registered to play across all forms of the game three years ago. Remarkably, in the months since Rio, that number has exploded to almost 14,000.

The love of women’s sevens, including the eighth-place Olympic finish for national women’s side the Fijiana, has trumped traditional cultural pressure for women to remain on the sideline, according to Get Into Rugby Oceania Co-ordinator, Tihrani Uluinakauvadra

“The preconceived idea that rugby is always the boy’s game has disappeared,” he says.

“Those who were always shy to come out, they walk freely onto the rugby field. The barrier has just totally been washed away.

“No more are girls being booed or getting negative comments from the public. We have a new chapter of rugby whereby women’s rugby is going to be just as strong as the men’s.” - Tihrani Uluinakauvadra, Get Into Rugby Oceania Co-ordinator

The Australian Rugby Union is now formally researching strategies to convert women interested in rugby into committed players.

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