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Black Ferns Sevens hope new four-team event will lead to women's World Series tournament

The Black Ferns Sevens continue to reap the rewards of their success and growing popularity with a four-team women's tournament added to the Hamilton leg of the men's World Series.

The Fast Four tournament will be played across two days in January, giving another boost to women's rugby in New Zealand.

While they've played exhibition matches in front of their fans before, it's the first time the Black Ferns Sevens will compete in a tournament on home soil.

And despite not being a World Series event, NZ Rugby chief strategy and operations officer Nigel Cass says it's a step towards it.

"We've put our hands up to host an integrated tournament in the future but we thought we just don't want to wait until 2020 for that to happen."

The news adds to what has already been a remarkable year for the Sevens Sisters.

After Commonwealth Games Gold and their stunning World Cup triumph in San Francisco, players such as Portia Woodman will finally get to show off their skills to friends and family who couldn’t always travel to watch her play.

The speedster helped launch next year's Fast Four'event in Hamilton today.

"I know I've already told my whānau to buy heaps of tickets so we'll see how that goes," Woodman says.

For New Zealand Rugby, the big goal now is in 2020 where they have a bid in to add a full women's World Series event to the men's weekend.

Cass says he hopes the Fast Four event is sending a message to World Rugby.

"It's absolutely putting our hand up to say, 'yep, we're really committed to this'."

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