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Maddison Levi eyes try-scoring record amid busy Sevens weekend in France

(Photo by Matt King/Getty Images)

New Zealand women have clinched the rugby sevens world series crown at the France Sevens, with closest rivals Australia forced to settle for the minor honours.

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The Australians registered the biggest win of the day when they pummelled Brazil 52-0, with Maddison Levi also equalling the record for most tries scored in a season.

Levi’s three tries against Brazil and brace against Ireland in the 33-12 win left her on 52 tries for the season, along with New Zealand’s Portia Woodman-Wickliffe.

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But the 21-year-old, who also plays for Gold Coast in the AFL women’s competition, is set to make the record her own this weekend with Australia leading Pool B ahead of Ireland, France and Brazil.

But the day belonged to the Kiwis, who put 50 points on Poland and 31 on the United States in their pool to secure a quarter-final spot and win the series with two days to spare.

The wins took New Zealand out of reach in the standings of Australia, the defending series champion.

The New Zealanders have taken seven of the 10 women’s series and won the last five legs this season. The only leg they didn’t win was the first, to Australia in the Dubai final.

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On the men’s side, New Zealand can secure the title by reaching the final. New Zealand looked ready by accounting for Canada and Kenya in pool play.

Australia, Great Britain, Argentina and France also stamped their mark with two wins from their opening matches.

With qualification for next year’s Paris Olympics at the back of their minds, the Australians thumped Japan 49-5 with Dietrich Roache, Henry Paterson and Matthew Gonzalez all grabbing braces.

They then had a much sterner challenge against Ireland but came through with a 12-5 win, thanks to tries from Paterson and Nick Malouf, to top Pool D.

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France thrashed South Africa 31-7 and edged out the United States 19-14 to lead Pool C while Argentina and Britain qualified for the quarter-finals after beating Spain and Germany.

Argentina just scraped home though. Spain led 19-0 before Marcos Moneta started the comeback with a try in first-half added time, and scored the last try with less than a minute to go after a counter-ruck in their own half. Santiago Vera Feld kicked the match-winning conversion.

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J
JW 1 hour ago
'Let's not sugarcoat it': Former All Black's urgent call to protect eligibility rules

Yep, no one knows what will happen. Thing is I think (this is me arguing a point here not a random debate with this one) they're better off trialing it now in a controlled environment than waiting to open it up in a knee jerk style reaction to a crumbling organtization and team. They can always stop it again.


The principle idea is that why would players leave just because the door is ajar?


BBBR decides to go but is not good enough to retain the jersey after doing it. NZ no longer need to do what I suggest by paying him to get back upto speed. That is solely a concept of a body that needs to do what I call pick and stick wth players. NZR can't hold onto everyone so they have to choose their BBBRs and if that player comes back from a sabbatical under par it's a priority to get him upto speed as fast as possible because half of his competition has been let go overseas because they can't hold onto them all. Changing eligibility removes that dilemma, if a BBBR isn't playing well you can be assured that someone else is (well the idea is that you can be more assured than if you only selected from domestic players).


So if someone decides they want to go overseas, they better do it with an org than is going to help improve them, otherwise theyre still basically as ineligible as if they would have been scorning a NZ Super side that would have given them the best chance to be an All Black.

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