Nine-year-old Harper Cluley coaxed her mum to drive through all the rain and gloom to get to Ballymore to meet her rugby hero Maddison Levi on Wednesday night.
Another Brisbane drenching and a soaked field gave even ardent fans every reason to stay away from the Open Training and autographs session staged by the Queensland Reds women’s team.
Missing it wasn’t even an option for Cluley and a small band of ardent young girls just like her.
This week is the start of something big, a moment in the women’s footy codes when the best of rugby sevens are blending with the best of the 15-a-side game for the first time.
Levi is World Rugby’s Women’s Sevens Player of the Year and three-time Olympian Charlotte Caslick bears that tag in just about every season she plays although her official gong came in 2016.
By also adding new Australian sevens captain Bella Nasser, bustling Teagan Levi and Kahli Henwood, the Reds have just got a classy jump in skill and professional standards for the 2025 Super Rugby Women’s season.
It was there to see on Wednesday night in opposed training. When a pass was pushed in the wet, Maddison Levi plucked the ball out of the sky with an intercept. Out wide, she latched onto a pilfer when on defence.
Sister Teagan was all energy and dished out one big front-on tackle.
Equally, the sevens girls could see all the potential of the new faces in the Reds Wider Training squad like powerful teenage prop Skye Faimalie and young halfback Evie Sampson.
No one just waltzes into a team. The sevens girls were earning their cred. So were the teens. They want to and the more established 15s girls want to see it too.
Little Harper watched and waited in the wet for more than 70 minutes until she could sidle up for an autograph.
Levi is her idol. She watches her games in the SVNS Series on TV and isn’t just one of Maddi’s 111,000 Instagram followers.
Maddi followed her back. When Maddi posted her excitement at joining the Reds, it was like a personal call to arms for lots of little Harpers.
“Maddi is always kind and she’s a really good runner,” said Harper, who plays in a mixed Under-10s team of boys and girls for the Wynnum Bugs.
“I score some tries too but the boys don’t always pass me the ball,” she added. Four-year-old Amelia Gaynor was at Ballymore too.
Dad Matt watches the sevens on Stan Sport but has found his daughter by his side on the couch more and more.
“Amelia loves it. She knew she wanted to come to Ballymore for this night two weeks ago.
Some nights, she should be sleeping but she gets up to watch the sevens on TV,” Matt said.
Hayley Burnett, 14, was drawn to rugby when she turned up to Ballymore in June to watch Australia’s Olympic sevens team play practice matches against Fiji and Japan.
“The skills, teamwork and the girls playing for their country really got me interested. I’m going to try rugby next year,” Hayley said.
Both dimensions of the women’s game have much to gain.
One of the biggest drawbacks of Australia’s popular women’s sevens team is that they play so sparingly on home soil when tournaments are staged in Dubai, Cape Town, Los Angeles and so on.
The 2025 Super Rugby Women's season will give Levi, Caslick and Co another window to play on home soil even though it may just be one blockbuster game against the NSW Waratahs on Sunday, March 16 at Ballymore.
The 15s girls have already seen some of the skills offered by their sevens sisters and they’ll be elevated by their professional habits.
Equally, 15s is a different game. It’s not short, explosive bursts across a 14-minute game but a more attritional contest over much longer.
“There are plenty of things to learn but I always enjoy challenging myself and developing as a player,” Caslick said.
“For example, going through the phases as you do in 15s is very different to sevens.”
Caslick has been taking some kicking instruction over recent months in preparation.
The 15s girls will teach them about patience, phase build-ups to expose weaknesses, what a real set piece is about at scrums and lineouts, a different defensive structure and more.
Levi is also excited: “The Reds girls have been very welcoming. It’s a challenge to develop new skills but we do have one very important thing in common from the start. “I only ever wanted to play for Queensland.”
