India’s Under-20 women’s rugby team has recorded a memorable 17\u20130 victory over a visiting M\u0101ori side from New Zealand during a bilateral rugby sevens series in the eastern state of Bihar.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Indian women kept their opponents scoreless in a match that formed part of celebrations marking 100 years of sporting ties between India and New Zealand.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The series, held from October 23rd to 28th at the Rajgir Sports Complex, brought specially selected M\u0101ori Under-20 rugby sevens teams to India for a sporting and cultural exchange.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The visiting women’s team, Hine Toa, and men’s team, Tama Toa, comprised 24 young M\u0101ori players selected from across New Zealand.\u00a0<\/p>\n
India led 12\u20130 at halftime in the women’s encounter on Tuesday before adding another five points after the break to complete the victory.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
The result was particularly notable given New Zealand’s international reputation as a rugby powerhouse.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The visiting side was not New Zealand’s regular national Under-20 women’s team, but a specially-assembled M\u0101ori invitational squad representing the country’s Indigenous rugby community.\u00a0<\/p>\n
While the Indian women celebrated their victory, the New Zealand visitors claimed the honours in the men’s contest, with Tama Toa defeating India’s Under-20 men 32\u20130.\u00a0<\/p>\n
According to New Zealand Rugby, the 24 players were accompanied by six management staff, with the tour funded by New Zealand’s foreign ministry.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Before leaving New Zealand on October 21st, delegation leader Manu Albert said the visit was about more than winning matches.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He acknowledged the matches would have a competitive element, while emphasising the opportunity to help develop India’s young players and coaches.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
The sporting exchange also brought M\u0101ori culture to Bihar, with the visitors performing a haka at the Rajgir Sports Complex.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Source: awaaz.co.nz<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"India’s Under-20 women’s rugby team has recorded a memorable 17\u20130 victory over a visiting M\u0101ori side from New…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":944581,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,760,155684,85],"class_list":["post-944580","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-rugby","tag-rugby-7s","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/944580","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=944580"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/944580\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/944581"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=944580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=944580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=944580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}