After tornado warnings and midnight matches, Wallaroos are ready for NZ<\/a><\/p>\nHaving survived the threat of tornadoes during their US tour, the Wallaroos are enjoying a distraction-free build-up to their Anzac Day Test against New Zealand.<\/p>\n
“I would love it,” she said.<\/p>\n
“I think it has every possibility to be able to do that. I think it shows how far female sport has come to get a Test match like this against the Black Ferns.<\/p>\n
“It’s monumental for the female game. I’m really excited to see the numbers who turn out.<\/p>\n
“What it means for both Australia and New Zealand \u2014 I think this could become a really big moment for sport in general, to get two national sides on Anzac Day who do have such a strong, rich history competing in the game.<\/p>\n
“I think it would be spectacular to keep going long-term.”<\/p>\n
How Duck came to rugby<\/p>\n
Growing up in the Riverina town of Tumut, Duck was largely unaware that rugby existed.<\/p>\n
The sport did not come into her orbit until she was 15, when the Australian women’s rugby sevens team won gold at the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.<\/p>\n
![\"Australia](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/437ce40def63d3882e1f569d0f7aa4f6.jpeg\")
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Piper Duck was inspired by Australia’s rugby sevens win at the Rio Olympics. (Getty Images\/World Rugby: Dan Mullan)<\/p>\n
“I always loved contact sport but it just wasn’t offered,” said Duck, who will play her 26th Test on Saturday night.<\/p>\n
“So I actually started refereeing rugby league very young. I was the first female rugby league ref in the Riverina \u2014 I think when I was 13, 14 \u2014 because rugby for women just wasn’t really known, especially in rural regions.<\/p>\n
“In 2016, when Sharni Williams and the sevens girls played at the Olympics, I was sitting on the couch and turned on the TV \u2026 I thought women weren’t allowed to play.<\/p>\n
“I had never even seen rugby union before and here it is, this game, and I’m like, ‘Oh my God, since when was this a possibility?’.<\/p>\n
“I was pretty amazed. That was a massive movement in rugby union at the time as a lot of young girls have come off the back of that and gone, ‘Wow, this is a possibility for me.'”<\/p>\n
![\"Piper](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/a7278be56827a0c3196f7b182c91a6e2.jpeg\")
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Piper Duck will play her 26th Test for the Wallaroos on Saturday night. (Getty Images\/ CameraSport)<\/p>\n
Duck’s love for rugby grew even further when she left Tumut to attend Sydney’s Barker College, where she helped start a girls team at the school.<\/p>\n
She hopes the Wallaroos’ Test against the Black Ferns can inspire greater female participation in rugby, in the same way she was drawn to the sport after Australia’s Olympic success 10 years ago.<\/p>\n
“We often say, ‘You can’t be what you can’t see’, and that was the moment for me,” Duck said.<\/p>\n
The Wallaroos and Black Ferns will be competing for the O’Reilly Cup across two Tests this season.<\/p>\n
They will meet again in Auckland on August 22.<\/p>\n
Saturday’s match is the final stop in the Pacific Four Series, which also features Canada and the USA.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Any time Piper Duck pulls on a Wallaroos jersey is a special moment. Piper Duck’s grandfather Keith served…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":628585,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[85102,64,63,49604,3389,304667,1736,304666,760,2633,85,11942,231,19259],"class_list":["post-628584","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-anzac-day","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-black-ferns","tag-international","tag-kawana-waters","tag-new-zealand","tag-piper-duck","tag-rugby","tag-rugby-union","tag-sports","tag-sunshine-coast","tag-test","tag-wallaroos"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/628584","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=628584"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/628584\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/628585"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=628584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=628584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=628584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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