2016–17 World Rugby Women's Sevens Series  The 2016–17 World Rugby Women's Sevens Series was the fifth edition of the World Rugby Women's Sevens Series (formerly the IRB Women's Sevens World Series), an annual series of tournaments organised by World Rugby for women's national teams in rugby sevens. There were six tournament events in 2016–17. Twelve teams competed at each event; eleven being "core" teams, with a twelfth team invited to participate in particular events (similar to previous women's series as well as the men's counterpart). At each event teams compete for gold, silver and bronze medals with the third place match now renamed as the Bronze match while lower ranked teams will contest a new Challenge Trophy competition. The overall winner of the series was determined by points gained from the standings across all events in the season. Eleven "core teams" qualified to participate in all series events for the 2016–17 series, the same number as the previous season. The top nine finishers in the previous series were granted core team status: Two additional core teams qualified for the 2016–17 series:  The twelfth team at each tournament in the 2016–17 series was invited at the discretion of World Rugby. Final standings for the 2016–17 series:  Source: World Rugby (archived)  In the first event of the series, New Zealand took revenge for their Olympic final loss by defeating Australia in the Cup final. The three medalists from the Olympic Games were unbeaten in the pool stage of the competition. In the quarter finals stage, Russia put behind their failure to qualify for the Olympics earlier in the year by eliminating Rio bronze medalists Canada. The final was a repeat of the Olympic final with Australia battling throughout the final but tries to Portia Woodman and Rebekah Cordero-Tufuga gave New Zealand the gold medal. The 5th place final was won by Fiji, while Ireland won the first Challenge Trophy which replaced the Bowl competition. Australia was included on the women's world circuit for the first time at the 2017 Sydney Women's Sevens. On the opening day of competition, England was the only core team not to make the Cup quarterfinals with only a win against Spain from their three pool matches. The upset of the tournament came from the United States as they defeated New Zealand in the semifinal stage. Canada won the Cup final over their North American neighbours, however, by 21–17. Fiji won the 5th place final for the second time in a row and Brazil won the Challenge Trophy.