Coach says Canadian women have turned corner ahead of Rugby World Cup Sevens

Having integrated more than a dozen new faces into the program, coach Jack Hanratty believes the Canadian women's rugby sevens team has turned a corner.

The Canadian squad will get a chance to prove him right at the Rugby World Cup Sevens, which start Friday in Cape Town.

The women's competition kicks off with round-of-16 knockout matches. The fifth-seeded Canadians open against No. 12 China with the winner moving on to face either the fourth-seeded U.S. or No. 13 Poland. 

The 10th-seeded Canadian men start against No. 23 Zimbabwe with the winner taking on No. 7 France in the round of 16.

The tournament features the "winner takes all knockout" format introduced at Rugby World Cup Sevens 2018 in San Francisco, with a single loss taking teams out of championship contention.

Top-seeded Australia takes on debutant Madagascar, seeded 16th, while Olympic champion and second-seeded New Zealand faces No. 16 Colombia in other opening women's matches.

Some 150,000 fans are expected in Cape Town Stadium over the three-day event which marks the eighth edition of the men's World Cup Sevens and the fourth for the women.

The Canadian women, runner-up to New Zealand at the 2013 event in Moscow, finished seventh four years ago. But there has been massive turnover in the program since last summer's Tokyo Olympics where the Canadians — bronze medallists at the 2016 Rio Games — finished ninth overall.

The women are coming off a fourth-place showing at the Commonwealth Games in July in Birmingham, England, losing 19-12 to New Zealand in the bronze-medal match. New Zealand won 45-7 when the teams met in pool play with Canada defeating England 26-19 and Sri Lanka 74-0 in its other round-robin games.

"When we beat England, that was kind of the