Perth SVNS: Australia men and women win opening matches against New Zealand and Great Britain respectively

Australia’s women and men’s sides have taken a significant stride towards the semifinals of the Perth SVNS at HBF Park after they both claimed wins over France to put themselves in control of their pools. After thrashing Great Britain 54-5, star siblings Maddison and Teagan Levi spearheaded a 26-12 victory over France, while the men backed up a 21-14 win over New Zealand with a 29-14 defeat of the French. Only heavy losses in their final group games, coupled with other results, would see the two Australian sides not progress to the final four. While it was business as usual for the dominant women’s side, the men have responded superbly to last week’s fifth-placed finish at Singapore’s sevens stop — particularly after they fell behind immediately to Josselin Bouhier’s converted try. But Josh Turner’s cut-out pass allowed Ben Dowling to touch down in the corner, and then Western Force young gun Wallace Charlie found a hole down the left edge. Dowling pushed Australia’s lead to 15-7 at half-time with an excellent one-man effort as he threw the dummy tight up against the touchline before scurrying away for five points. Ben Dalton added another try soon after the restart and although Hoani Bosmorin reduced the margin back to eight after Jordan Sepho narrowly evaded the clutches of Henry Hutchinson, Hadley Tonga iced the game soon after. Having earlier beaten New Zealand thanks to tries from Dowling, Dalton and Jayden Blake, the former said the team were delighted with their response to Singapore last week. “Our coaches, they make it one game at a time — during the week, it was all about New Zealand, we had a couple of hours to prepare for the French,” Dowling said. “We definitely respect the opposition, but also exciting to finish day three off, going into try get another win in front of this home crowd.” In the women’s French clash, Maddison Levi scored two first-half tries to send Australia on their way before younger sister Teagan threw a perfect assist to maintain their lead after the break. The elder Levi was restricted to a late cameo try in Australia’s big win over the Brits on Saturday morning, but grabbed two in as many minutes against France, the second of which saw her bulldoze Lea Trollier on her way to the try line. After captain Isabella Nasser made it 19-0 before the break, before Teagan Levi’s excellent cut-out pass to Faith Nathan saw the winger put the French resistance to bed, either side of tries to Lili Dezou and Kelly Arbey. “We talk about focusing on our process, game-by-game. We know sevens is a game of momentum, game of minutes, game of moments, so we just try to focus on the task at hand — and at this point, it’s recovering hard and then going again against Canada,” Nasser said. In the women’s first game, Heidi Dennis grabbed a hat-trick for the women as Australia piled on 54 unanswered points despite stars Madison Ashby and the Levi sisters starting on the bench. After Katie Shillaker had opened the scoring for the Brits, it was one-way traffic the rest of the way after Mackenzie Davis took Nasser’s offload to the house to make it 7-5 and Nathan juked Shillaker almost out of her boots en route to a superb solo try.