Australia lift Sao Paulo title

In torrential rain, Shannon Parry led her team to a 29-0 win over Canada in the Cup Final after Canada had earlier shocked reigning champions New Zealand in the semi-finals with a wonder try from captain Jen Kish. It was Canada's first ever win over New Zealand but they didn't have quite enough left in the tank in the final after that huge effort.The Bowl final was won by Russia, who defeated Japan, and the Plate Final was claimed by France who overcame Fiji. Third place at the competition went to New Zealand, who, despite improving on their fifth place finish in Dubai, will be disappointed not to have made the final in Brazil. They beat USA 28-0, with the Americans making a dramatic improvement on the last round finishing fourth compared to 11th in Dubai.

Australia's triumph was fully deserved - not conceding a single point on the second day and getting better and better as the tournament went on. New Zealand had looked even stronger until their semi-final, which was transformed by an injury to Kayla McAlister - the smooth, controlled Ferns leaking 19 points to Canada in the five minutes she was off the field. Canada could thank Jen Kish for their spot in the final - her power and ability were never better shown than last weekend.

Several teams were resting key members of their main squad - especially Russia and France - which gave players who do not normally get much game time a chance to stake a claim for future tournaments, and ultimately the Rio Olympics. The apparent decline of Russia, from finalists in Dubai to the bowl in Sao Paulo, can certainly be accounted for by this, with several of their new young players, such as 19 year-old Elena Zdrokova, performing very creditably.

In the same light, France's performance was astonishing. Coach David Courteix said before the event that only three players from Sao Paulo would go forward to tournaments in the USA and Canada - he now has a selection problem of epic proportions. Shannon Izar was one of the stars of the tournament, especially on Day One, and most of the rest of the squad also seized the opportunity given to them.

Of the other teams, Fiji again had a mixed weekend, doing enough on the first day to make the quarter-finals without looking spectacular, before saving up their best performance for the plate semi-finals where they shocked England, winning comfortably 26-10. The Fijians are clearly improving every time - their fitness is now significantly better than last year - what they need now is more consistency in their performances. They are certainly the team to avoid!

England themselves started promisingly with wins over Japan and Brazil, then lost three straight games before beating Brazil again to finish a disappointing seventh. While they were also shuffling their squad a little, the defeats - to France, United States and Fiji - were all games they could and perhaps should have won. Natasha Hunt's comment prior to the tournament about England'slack of paceproved prescient. It does not matter how good rugby players England are (and without question they are among the very best in the world), if they cannot catch runners like Kristen Thomas or Jessica Javelet they will always have problems.

Nine of the teams in Sao Paulo have already qualified for Rio, but Ireland, Russia and Spain will be fighting for one final spot in June. As a full dress rehearsal for that all three met in the Bowl, and it was telling that – despite having most of their top players at home – Russia triumphed. Ireland are a far better side than they were in their first taste of the World Series two years ago, but the game has moved on so far and so fast that they never seemed likely to pick up a win, while Spain started the weekend with a win over the Russians but failed to maintain that performance in other games.

The difficulty that Ireland and Spain face, not to mention Japan and Brazil, is that however they improve the opposition gets better too. They are sprinting to stand still. This was almost certainly Brazil’s final World Series before Rio (and also the last time they are likely to host a tournament, especially as crowds were again very low and post-2016 the game will have far less money to spare). That they reached the quarter-finals was a positive, but over the weekend they managed only one win – against Japan – and despite significant improvements in recent years they show no sign of closing the gap with the top teams as the standard of the competition improves year on year, and tournament on tournament. As they - and come to that Fiji and England and the United States and others - are finding, the World Series is incredibly tough.

Qantas Australian Women’s Head Coach Tim Walsh said:

“It was a great tournament but it was our progressive performances that I was happy with. We started a bit slow this morning (against Fiji) and played one of our worst games but when it counted we really stood up. We worked hard on our strategy in terms of the [weather] conditions but you never know what you’re going to get. We’re a good team and we want to be able to be a good team in all conditions. Everyone wants to win a World Series but in the back of everyone’s mind is making sure we are peaking for Rio in August."

Canada Head Coach John Tait said:“We really stepped it up today and played much better defence in the first two matches. We won the breakdown battle in those and then really stuck to our game plan to get into the cup final. Being on the wrong side of a one sided final was tough because we know we are a much better side then the final score showed but we couldn’t hold onto to the ball for more than a couple of phases and the Aussies put us to the sword.”“It was really important to get back into the top tier. The competition is only getting tougher so we needed to go out and prove again to ourselves that regardless of who we have or don’t have in our lineup right now we can compete and win tough games when we execute as a team. I’m particularly proud of this effort because the conditions don’t get much tougher then 38 degree heat and humidity. The girls dug deep but came up a little short so we will be hungry to go one better in Atlanta and Langford come April.”Full credit to the girls for the way they perform and the way they train for the results. They try and better themselves constantly and it has made us the outfit we are today.”

New Zealand head coach Coach Sean Horan saidthe result was pleasing on many levels and marked an improvement from Dubai, but losing in the semi-final to Canada hurt.“There was some good stuff here but we need to match it when those physical teams come up against us, like Canada and Russia. We’ve been found wanting in the last two tournaments when it comes to the physical side of teams running at us. So  key for us is to get better at go-forward, tackle and dominating that contact area.“We probably had more confidence than in Dubai in the way we wanted to attack and play the game. We were a little bit fitter and we also had a couple of changes to the squad which sharpened up the way we wanted to play the game. That showed through in the results.“When you play five decent games out of six and you come up third it’s hard to swallow. But also it’s a good learning. If you fall short on one game, you won’t win it. So that’s key for us. We have to be prepared, because everyone brings their A game against us. Canada taught us a bit of a lesson.”He had high praise for try scoring machine Kayla McAlister.“Eleven tries in effectively four games is an amazing result. She was injured in semi-final against Canada in first minute then came back on and scored an amazing try. She's pretty phenomenal.”The series returns in April when teams travel to Atlanta, USA (9 and 10 April) before moving on to Langford, British Columbia, Canada (16 and 17 April) for the next rounds of the HSBC World Rugby Women's Sevens Series.

Results:

Pool A: Australia 26–17 Fiji; Canada 26–7 Ireland; Australia 19–5 Ireland; Canada 24–7 Fiji; Australia 29–14 Canada; Fiji 15–7 Ireland

Pool B: Russia 12–19 Spain; New Zealand 35–5 United States; Russia 10–19 United States; New Zealand 46–0 Spain; Russia 10–40 New Zealand; Spain 0–33 United States

Pool C: England 38–5 Japan; France 29–10 Brazil; England 24–12 Brazil; France 36–7 Japan; England 12–17 France; Japan 5–27 Brazil

Cup:Quarter finals: Australia 10-0 Fiji 0; United States 22-12 England; New Zealand 41-0 Brazil; Canada 19-0 FranceSemi-finals: Australia 34-0 United States; New Zealand 10-19 CanadaThird place: United States 0-28 New Zealand 28Final: Australia 29-0 Canada

Plate:Semi-finals: Fiji 26-12 England 12; Brazil 7-24 France7thplace: England 24-7 Brazil 7Final (5thplace): Fiji 5-17 France

Bowl:Semi-finals: Spain 7-17 Japan; Ireland 0-15 Russia11thplace: Spain 19-0 IrelandFinal (9thplace) Japan 12-38 Russia