Five members of the New Zealand women’s sevens team which won silver at the Rio Olympics last month were in Dunedin yesterday to promote women’s rugby.
It was the final stop of a tour which has taken in seven cities in seven days.
Former Otago Girls’ High School pupil Kelly Brazier was joined by team-mates Ruby Tui, Tyla Nathan-Wong, Portia Woodman and the captain Sarah Goss.
The team took the loss to Australia in the gold-medal match quite hard.
But the support they had received during the past few weeks helped lift their spirits.
The women’s game is enjoying encouraging growth and Brazier (26) said the promotional tour had underlined to her how far the sport has come.
"It is awesome to see the number of girls playing rugby now," she said.
"The vision was to inspire female rugby players, and by winning the silver medal and taking it around the country, we can see that we’ve done that."
About 200 girls attended the event at Hancock Park, which included an under-15 sevens tournament.
School teams from Invercargill, Winton, Gore, Dunedin and Oamaru competed.
Afterwards, there was a question-and-answer session and an opportunity to have a photograph taken with an Olympian.
But many could not wait that long.
