Date 1 Dec 2016 – 25 June 2017 | ||
The 2016–17 World Rugby Women's Sevens Series is the fifth edition of the World Rugby Women's Sevens Series (formerly the IRB Women's Sevens World Series), an annual series of tournaments organised by World Rugby for women's national teams in rugby sevens. The tour is a companion to the 2016–17 World Rugby Sevens Series for men.
Contents
The competition
There are six tournament events in 2016–17. Twelve teams compete at each event; eleven being "core" teams, with a twelfth team invited to participate in particular events (similar to previous women's series as well as the men's counterpart). The overall winner of the series is determined by points gained from the standings across all events in the season.
Teams
Eleven "core teams" qualified to participate in all series events for the 2016–17 series, the same number as the previous season. The top nine finishers in the previous series were granted core team status:
Two additional core teams qualified for the 2016–17 series:
The twelfth team at each tournament in the 2016–17 series is invited at the discretion of World Rugby.
Standings
Progress standings for the 2016–17 series:
Source:
Dubai
The first event of the season saw New Zealand take revenge of the Olympic final loss by defeating Australia in the Cup final. The opening day of the fifth season saw the three medalists from the Olympic Games going unbeaten in the pool stage of the competition. In the quarter finals stage, Russia failure to qualify to the Olympics was momentum as they eliminated bronze medalists Canada. The final was a repeat of the Olympic final with Australia battling throughout the final but tries to Portia Woodman and Rebekah Cordero-Tufuga gave New Zealand the gold medal and took the lead in the series. The plate competition was won by Fiji while Ireland won the first Challenge Trophy which replaced the Bowl competition.
Sydney
The tour headed to Sydney for the first Australian Women's Sevens in the World Series. On the opening day of competition only England didn't make it out of the group stage as they only won against Spain. The quarter finals went to script with the hosts and New Zealand both going through to the semis. The big surprise came from the Americans as they made it to the cup final after they upset New Zealand in the Cup Semi Final. In the final, Canada would take out the Cup final, the plate going to Fiji for the second time in a row and Brazil winning the Challenge Trophy