Dubai: New Zealand forward Sarah Goss billed her last minute try in Friday’s 19-17 women’s final win over Australia in Dubai Rugby Sevens as redemption for last year’s final defeat here to the Wallabies.

Australia had beaten New Zealand 35-27 in Dubai in 2013, but Goss helped avenge the defeat to comeback from 17-0 down at half-time, to return to 17-14 with a minute to play, before scoring the match winning try.

Goss said revenge over Australia was sweet and applauded her teammates’ ability to pull the game back from the brink.

“It’s always good to beat Australia and this is a bit of redemption for last year,” she said. “Winning is big and we wanted that victory in the final.

“We just needed to get back to doing what we are really good at. We let them through and missed tackles in that first half, so we wanted to come back and make some chop tackles [after the interval] and go from there, which we did and we feel really with.”

New Zealand had beaten France 31-10 in the semi-finals and Russia 19-17 in the quarter-finals after having topped Pool A with wins over China 43-0, USA 24-19 and Russia 29-12.

Victory in the opening round of the six-stage series sets the double series winners up well for a hat-trick this season, where the top four teams qualify for rugby’s Olympic debut in 2016. “This year is all about the Olympic qualifying so we’ve started the series off really well,” she added.

“We’ve won every game, so that’s a big bonus. Obviously there are a few things to work upon before the next tournament, but otherwise I’m just extremely happy with how the girls have performed out here.”

Meanwhile, Australia were aggrieved with the way they threw the game away and had misgivings about a second half penalty to New Zealand and two line-out calls. But otherwise, Australia’s Sharni Williams took the defeat in good grace.

“The girls came out and played some pretty good footy, I’m proud of that and from where we were last year we’ve definitely stepped it up a bit,” she said. “We were a bit unfortunate just before the final whistle with the late try, but that’s footy. They are those one per centers that could go either way.”

Australia coach Tim Walsh expressed his disappointment over the late try but said there were positives to take from the defeat. “Top four is where we need to finish every tournament, we’ve done second here. It’s always nice to win it and we should have won it, that’s the disappointing thing, but we played well and the players really stood up to the task.”