Chasing Portia: Brake could overhaul former team-mate’s try record in Vancouver

Around the time that the iPhone 5 was the must-have accessory, Portia Woodman – as she was known then – became the leading try scorer in HSBC sevens.

Back in 2013, in the early days of the women’s series, she would go toe-to-toe with the likes of Emilee Barton (nee Cherry), now a World Rugby Hall of Famer, in the leading try-scoring stakes. With 21 tries at the end of the first season, which consisted of just four events, Woodman finished as the top scorer and has led the way ever since. 

When she retired from international sevens at the end of last season, Woodman-Wickliffe – she and Renee Wickliffe married in December 2022 – had 256 tries to her name. 

But records are made to be broken and this weekend when HSBC SVNS returns to Vancouver it’s likely that another with a new name but an equally familiar face will top the all-time try scorers list for the first time. 

Fellow kiwi flyer Michaela Brake (nee Blyde) starts the weekend on 254 in a try-scoring career that has some parallels with her trail-blazing ex-team-mate. Woodman-Wickcliffe played 255 matches across 44 tournaments, while Vancouver will be Brake’s 45th series event, having so far played 257 games. 

The early stages of Brake’s career were a much slower burn than Woodman-Wickliffe’s. After making her debut in the 2014 season, Brake, still a teenager, only played in eight out of a possible 15 tournaments in the lead up to the Rio Olympics in 2016, while Woodman had been one of the first names on the team-sheet right from the start. 

The following year, however, Brake showed she too was a try-scoring weapon to be reckoned with.

That season – and in 2018 – the pair played in lethal tandem, combining for 143 tries, despite the fact Woodman-Wickliffe missed two events due to Rugby World Cup commitments. 

Across those two seasons, New Zealand won the Commonwealth Games and Sevens World Cup, and lost just three games on the series – one of which was a 31-0 hiding at the hands of Australia that spurred the Black Ferns Sevens to even greater heights.

Only today, in Australian wonder-duo Maddison Levi and Faith Nathan, does another team now boast twin strike weapons as lethal as Brake and Woodman-Wickliffe were from 2017 through to the latter’s retirement after the Paris Olympics.

We’ll never know what more Brake and Woodman-Wickliffe could have done as a pair in the lead up to the Tokyo Olympics. The latter ruptured her Achilles shortly after scoring 10 tries in Glendale to start the 2019 season and wouldn’t play again on the series – because of rehab and the pandemic – until May 2022. 

Had she been able to take to the field in that time, there’s no doubt we’d be talking about Brake tracking down a try record well in excess of 300. 

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Brake and Woodman-Wickliffe are two vastly different personalities, from different backgrounds and parts of Aotearoa, but both come from hugely supportive, rugby loving families. 

There have always been obvious similarities in their pace and power – but over the latter stages of Woodman-Wickliffe’s career her role changed, with Brake one of the benefactors. 

As the former’s strength to draw in defenders became increasingly important to New Zealand’s success, Brake had the room to roam on the opposite edge and her try-scoring numbers rocketed: 43 in the 2023 season and 53 in 2024. Woodman-Wickliffe, by contrast, scored 24 and 27, although she missed the first two events in 2023 after the Rugby World Cup. 

Brake showed in Perth in January that she can still be a devastating strike weapon, but the way New Zealand is playing is also evolving – perhaps in preparation for the day they can’t call on her electric speed. 

In the opening weekend of the HSBC SVNS Series in Dubai, they had 10 different try-scorers. Eight different players crossed in both Cape Town and Perth. 

Risi Pouri-Lane is equal fifth on the try-scoring list this season, the highest-ranked New Zealand player. But there are eight Black Ferns Sevens in the top 20 so far. While Brake remains their ultimate strike weapon, they have multiple ways to score. 

Once she does overtake Woodman-Wickliffe, just how long Brake holds top position will depend on how much longer she plays. 

Levi is marching up the list in much the same manner she does on the field – at pace, plowing a path up to the top of the log at a strike rate never before seen. 

But Brake is a ferocious competitor. Perhaps being the first to 300 is in her sights before she calls it a day?

Since the inception of the women’s competition in 2012, the game has been blessed with quality finishers, players with raw speed, superb athletes who became outstanding rugby players. Ellia Green, Naya Tapper, Bianca Farella and Amee-Leigh Costigan set the standard – and now a new generation of fliers in Thalia Costa, Krissy Scurfield and Ariana Ramsey are taking things to another level. Levi, meanwhile, is in a category all of her own. 

But, just as their predecessors were doing 10 years ago, all these players are chasing two Kiwis. 

Portia Woodman-Wickliffe changed the face of the game. Michaela Brake is continuing her legacy.