Byers was a standout, her efforts over the two days seeing her named in the team of the tournament for what was the third leg of the Uni 7s series.

She has also been invited to, in the coming weeks, train with the Australian side.

“She has been playing really good football in the previous two tournaments but she found another gear in Brisbane,” Lions coach Ross Duncan said.

“I talked to her about her raising her physicality levels. She’s always scoring points for us. I wanted her to lead from the front for us in defence.”

She produced one of the hits of the tournament, flooring one of the Griffith University players.

Impressively she got up and made the next tackle, although in the process of that dislocated her finger. 

But after going to hospital on Saturday night and getting it put back in, she was back out there on Sunday.

The Lions finished sixth overall for the second successive tournament.

“We’re building but we just sort of can’t take that next step,” Duncan said.

The University of Canberra again proved their bogey team.

“We’ve unfortunately in the last two tournaments been beaten by Canberra in the the fifth and sixth play-off,” he said.

“In the Canberra tournament it was 10-all and went to golden point and they scored. In Brisbane they beat us 22-21 and we gave them three if not four very soft tries.”

After starting off the tournament with a 22-15 win over the University of Tasmania, they suffered heavy losses to eventual finalists the University of Queensland and Griffith University but bounced back on Sunday with wins over the University of Melbourne (31-7) and University of Adelaide (21-14).

READ MORE: 

“We had two Wallaroos that came in on the weekend. Katrina Barker played nine and 10. The other was Grace Hamilton, who is the current Wallaroos number eight,” Duncan said.

Unfortunately Hamilton was only available for the Sunday.

Her loss was compounded when one of the other players copped a head knock early on and was ruled out, leaving the Lions down two players.

Duncan felt that did have an affect, especially coming up against the two top teams, and said they played a much better style of football on Sunday.

“We’re a lot better team, as anyone is in 7s, when we control the ball,” he said.

“We managed the games a lot better against Melbourne and Adelaide and had some really good parts in the game against Canberra.”

What wasn’t good was their kick-off receives.

“In the second half was had four kick-offs to us and each hit the ground. It meant we played each kick-off out of our 22 which meant straight away the pressure was on us,” he said.

The next round is on the Gold Coast in two weeks and Duncan is optimistic of fielding the strongest squad they have.