Batlow’s Sharni Smale was presented with her 2024 Paris Olympics jersey by her wife Mel Smale earlier this week. The sevens team face Canada overnight in the semi-finals. Photo: Rugby Australia.
Batlow residents were pumping coffee as their homegrown girl Sharni Smale (nee Williams) and the Australian sevens team powered their way toward gold contention at the 2024 Paris Olympics this morning.
Even with that glint in her eyes, the tournament is bittersweet for former Batlow Central and Batlow Technology High School student Sharni who last week announced she was bowing out of the international seven-a-side format competition.
She announced she wants to return to her roots playing 15-a-side rugby, in which she has previously represented ACT Brumbies, Canberra Royals and Australia’s Wallaroos, with a telescopic sight set on the latter and the 10th Women’s Rugby World Cup in 2025.
For now, Paris 2024 marks the third Olympic games for the 36-year-old, who co-captained the Australian rugby sevens team to clinch gold at the Rio 2016 Olympics, then making it to the quarter-finals at Tokyo 2020.
Olympics aside, Sharni was part of the Australian team that won Commonwealth Games silver in 2018 and gold in 2022, the same year the women’s sevens rugby team also secured the World Cup title.
She remains Australia’s longest-serving women’s rugby sevens player.
Amid her rocketing achievements, Sharni’s still had one foot back in Batlow and her efforts to buoy the town – almost lost to the 2019-2020 Black Summer bushfires – have never been forgotten.
She singlehandedly raised $27,000 towards recovery efforts, at the time stating: “This town built me and I owe it to the community to have a town for the next generation to grow and dream like I was able to do”.
Apart from opening her Northern Beaches home to local firefighters in January 2020 after Rugby Australia donated 2000 tickets to the two-day sevens tournament to firefighters directly involved in the devastating bushfires, Sharni has also returned home to support efforts to help get the town back on its feet.
Signs of her are everywhere – not the least of which is her framed and signed Sevens jersey in Batlow Bakery and a hall named in her honour at Batlow Technology High School.
In making her sevens retirement announcement last week, she said it was difficult to put into words what the game meant to her.
“But I am left with an overwhelming sense of gratitude and humility,” she said.
“Rugby has given me a sense of belonging, and allowed me to feel safe to express who I am and show others it’s okay to do the same.
The lifelong friendships made are what I’ll take with me, along with the memories of the incredible highs and lows we have shared together. I feel privileged to have played a part in the growth of the game to what it is today, and will always be the biggest champion of it, even from the sidelines.
“Before that though, one more job to do”.
This week, after back-to-back wins over South Africa, Great Britain and beating Ireland twice, the Australian women’s sevens team has now earned a semi-finals berth to face Canada.
Australia will play Canada in the semi-final at midnight (AEST) tonight.
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