The Black Ferns Sevens will finally play against a home crowd this weekend. Photo / Photosport
The Black Ferns Sevens will finally play against a home crowd this weekend. Photo / Photosport
The Black Ferns sevens are set to make their home crowd debut today, playing on New Zealand soil during the HSBC New Zealand Sevens tournament for the first time.
The self-named 'Sevens Sisters' will take on Rugby World Cup Sevens runners-up France, China and England in the new Fast Four Tournament at Hamilton's FMG Stadium Waikato.
Black Ferns veteran Ruby Tui said that although the tournament was not part of the world circuit, it meant a lot to each of the women wearing the black jersey this weekend.
"I've been in this program for eight years now and we've never had the opportunity to wear the Black Ferns jersey in front of a home crowd, this means so much to us, it's right up there in the highlight of our year," Tui told Radio Sport.
"We've all been looking forward to this Hamilton tournament, we've all been wanting to make this squad this weekend so this is huge for us internally.
"There are so many levels of how special and how much mana this weekend has for our team and I honestly just can't wait to get out there and do our families proud."
Since the women's Sevens Series was introduced in 2012, the national women's side have been at the forefront of the game and will take to the pitch this weekend with an impressive 39-game win streak – one they won't be keen to give up in front of an excited home crowd.
The side are also fresh off the back of a successful season were they claimed Commonwealth Games gold before taking out titles in Japan, Canada, France, USA and Dubai, along with a World Cup Sevens defence in San Francisco last July.
However, Tui said they were still wary of their top-class competition and looked forward to the challenge teams such as France promised to bring.
The Black Ferns Sevens boast a 39-game win streak ahead of this weekend. Photo / Photosport
"The women's game is still developing at the same insanely fast rate but we're more looking at how teams defend this weekend. A lot of the teams are employing a shut defence, putting pressure on, dropping the sweep and demanding and excellent skillset from the other teams," she said.
"If you want to see passion, if you want to see someone putting their body on the line, watch that French women's team. There's nobody better in the world that does it and we're going to have to bring out an excellent skillset against that if we want to do well against them.
"[China] really throw everything into their footy. They're developing a lot too but we hope not too much this weekend.
"There's four teams, we're all here to prove a point and show the world what we've got."
The Black Ferns Sevens kick off their Fast Four campaign this afternoon against England, before facing France and then China in tomorrow's final round.
