Despite results not going their way at the Country Championships, New England women's sevens co-coach Luke Stephen believes his side achieved what they set out to do.
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"We were pretty clear on our goal when we started our campaign; we wanted to make these girls better footballers to lift the standard across the competition," Stephen told The Armidale Express.
"For us, we want to see these girls go back to their clubs better footballers.
"That was a big focus for us, the work that Mitch [Pardy], Oli [Wright] and I put in, was how do we make these girls better footballers to improve the standard of rugby week-in, week-out.
"It is hard to do that in a short time frame but I thought we did see some exciting signs shown that these girls can hold themselves with these zones."
The best women's rugby players from country NSW battled at Bellevue Oval for the championships.
New England faced a tough start first up, taking on eventual winners Hunter.
They were beaten 34-nil and then were downed 27-10 by third-placed Central West.
Sunday saw them miss out on the win again Mid North Coast 22-5, followed by the bowl final against Western Plains where they were defeated 15-5 to round out the tournament.
"The girls can definitely hold their high knowing that we gave an honest account of ourselves at that next level, we weren't disgraced in any of our games," Stephen said.
"The effort was there across every minute, and that is from the coach's point-of-view."
New England is the smallest of the country zones and with a large contingent of university teams, preparation was limited.
"Not the most ideal of preparations with just under three weeks to get the team together," Stephen said.
"I thought structure-wise, we didn't look that bad.
"A bit of a experience played a key part in games that could have gone either way.
"For 12 out of our 14 girls it was their first go at representative football and I thought they can take the knowledge that they are good enough to play at that next level back to their clubs and then really look to grow the game."
For the New England girls, Stephen nominated Armidale Blues' Ash Van Den Boogard and rugby newcomer Georgie O'Neill as the side's best.
"It was her [O'Neill's] second weekend of rugby, she is a first year girl at Albies and played league tag at Tenterfield before.
"In her second tournament was arguably one of our better players.
"They are the encouraging things so it is going to be exciting to see how these girls go back and play in a week-in, week-out style competition."
Sophie Tongue and Jo McGrath-Weber were also part of the combined NSW Country President's team who went down to Mid North Coast in the plate final.