Advertise with NZME.<\/a><\/p>\nThe Black Ferns Sevens have defended their Hong Kong title, defeating Australia 19-14 in the final, maintaining their stranglehold on the event. <\/p>\n
\n The New Zealanders have won all four finals at the seven circuit\u2019s biggest event ever since the women\u2019s series arrived there in 2023. In Sunday\u2019s match, they
\n always looked strong, despite a late Australian strike that closed the margin.\n <\/p>\n
Mahina Paul opened the scoring for the Black Ferns in the third minute, with Jorja Miller dotting down two minutes later. Skipper Risi Pouri-Lane converted both tries, and even when Australia\u2019s Isabella Nasser struck back in the sixth minute, the Black Ferns looked in control. <\/p>\n
A ninth-minute unconverted try to Kelsey Teneti looked to have settled the match, before Aussie gun Maddison Levi was finally able to get into the action, barging through grasping defenders on the left flank to head in under the posts with 30 seconds left on the clock. <\/p>\n
After Tia Hinds knocked over her second conversion, Australia were unable to secure the ball at the restart, and the match closed in deflated fashion with a knock on marking the start of the Kiwi celebrations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NZ Herald 19 Apr, 2026 11:37 AM2 mins to read Subscribe to listenAccess to Herald Premium articles require…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":387227,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[123088,6030,85,7022,10810,99524,58216,6097,8231,10541,5904,305,20588,45499,103476,37261,111,43,139,69,86296,200594,165,2563,61],"class_list":{"0":"post-387226","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-zealand","8":"tag-123088","9":"tag-again","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-black","12":"tag-defeating","13":"tag-defended","14":"tag-dominance","15":"tag-down","16":"tag-event","17":"tag-ferns","18":"tag-final","19":"tag-have","20":"tag-hong","21":"tag-kong","22":"tag-maintain","23":"tag-maintaining","24":"tag-new-zealand","25":"tag-news","26":"tag-newzealand","27":"tag-nz","28":"tag-sevens","29":"tag-stranglehold","30":"tag-their","31":"tag-title","32":"tag-to"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=387226"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387226\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/387227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=387226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=387226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=387226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}