Black Ferns’ dream encounters an obstacle

The New Zealand women's rugby sevens team has been living a dream. Unlike other teams, the Black Ferns juggle work and rugby, but that hasn't stopped them from ruling the women's game.
The Sevens Sisters clinched their fourth HSBC World Rugby Sevens Series title last year by winning all barring the Sydney leg last season.
That saw them become the first women's side to win the World Rugby Team of the Year in Monaco last week. It was a massive, massive accomplishment considering England and the All Blacks had held sway, winning the award each year, since 2010.
But that dream encountered an obstacle as they were stunned by the USA and went out in the quarterfinals stage of the Emirates Airline Dubai Rugby Sevens.
The Black Ferns had aced their head-to-heads with 17 wins from 20 fixtures but there was always a target on their back. And so it proved at The Sevens Stadium on Friday as New Zealand suffered their fourth defeat against the Americans.
They eventually went on to finish fifth.
Allan Bunting, who had taken over as coach just before the Dubai leg last season, said a few key moments mattered in the end.
 "It was a pretty good weekend but there were a couple of moments in that USA game that changed everything," said Allan Bunting.
"We love Dubai and we love being out in that atmosphere but if you don't win you end up being on field two. We recovered from the USA and came back mentally against Spain and backed it up against France. Those games aren't easy. So, we were consistent except for a couple of moments," he added.
Conducting a post-mortem on the loss to the USA, he said: "It's all about possession. The USA got the ball and held onto it. Out of 21 rucks they had four, that's possession. It was tough to get the ball back and they played a confrontational game with close support, out of 31 tackles they only missed two."
But he did say that lessons will be learnt from this episode. "It's something we'll learn from but other than that we came here to get playing and get a measure of where we are at and we are pretty happy with where we are at, we've just got to make sure we turn up every game," Bunting said.
"You're best learning from losing, this will just make the next couple of months for us a bit edgier in training and we'll come back better for it," he added.
Hurting after that shock loss to the USA, New Zealand blew off against Spain, winning 43-0 in the fifth place semifinal before getting the better of France, to finish fifth.
Winger Portia Woodman, the women's Player of the Year, scored a hat-trick of tries, while Tyla Nathan-Wong had a brace of conversions.
The Black Ferns were surprised by the USA, right at the start, with the Americans taking a shock lead through Naya Tapper's try and Leyla Alev Kelter's conversion on four minutes.
But New Zealand responded through Gayle Broughton, who scored a try and Tyla Nathan-Wong did what she does best with the conversion.
With the scores level, Bunting brought on Theresa Fitzpatrick and Kayla McAlister. They then took the lead after half-time through Portia Woodman but the missed conversion by Wong may have proved costly in the end.
Kelsi Stockert levelled it before Kelter scored