Girls to go hard for halftime sevens
FEMALE Gold Coast rugby talent is getting its moment on the big stage during the Wallabies versus Argentina this Saturday night.
The Bond University and Griffith University women’s sevens sides will clash in a halftime exhibition at CBUS Super Stadium.
Bond vice-captain and front rower Millie Boyle said the team was looking forward to the opportunity.
“It’ll be a nice hitout against Griffith and we are really looking forward to the crowd,” she said.
The first-year Sports Management student – selected for the national women’s rugby side for last year’s World Cup – said sevens offered a lot of crossovers with 15-a-side.
Boyle, 20, said increasing pathways were opening up for women playing contact sports to national and professional honours.
“If you take the game from where it was five or 10 years ago, there is definitely a lot more opportunity and pathways created for females in contact sport,” she said.
“In rugby, league and (Aussie rules) it’s awesome to see so many girls getting behind it and play at such a high level.”
She added the women’s sevens final at a sold-out CBUS Super Stadium during the Commonwealth Games had everyone on “the edge of their seats” and had been a great advertisement for the game.
“It was awesome to watch that, it’s created a platform, it set a high standard for sevens,” she said.
“We are fortunate to have had it here on the Gold Coast.”.
Griffith University sevens team member Chantelle Holloway-Samuels, 19, said she started playing at secondary school but had three years out with a knee injury.
But she had since recovered from having a torn meniscus and was looking forward to pushing herself as far as she could go in the game.
“At the moment they are small goals. We’ll see how we go,” she said.
The exercise science student said she initially played touch while on the mend before recently returning to tackle sevens rugby.
She said pathways for women playing contact sports nowadays were exciting.
“It’s about time if you ask me for women to really step up and show what we have got,” she said.
The curtain-raiser to the Wallabies-Argentina clash will be a Gold Coast under-15 final.