By Daniel Gilhooly
A late stumble last season has been written off as a valuable hiccup by the all-conquering New Zealand women's sevens rugby team.
New Zealand will try to make it four titles out of four when the 2015-16 series begins in Dubai later on Thursday.
With just four tournaments on offer in the leadup to the Olympics, the pressure goes straight on coach Sean Horan, who has been forced to name a relatively inexperienced team because of injuries.
He will hope they can still bolt from the gates as they did last year, when they won the first four of six tournaments.
With Olympic qualification sealed at that stage, they couldn't even reach the final of the last two events in London and Amsterdam, finishing third and fifth.
Horan says those results haven't played on his mind over the last six months.
"By that stage we'd achieved our goal of qualifying for Rio so we eased the pressure off and made it a good opportunity for some young players," he told NZ Newswire.
"You're still going to get hurt from something like that but at the same time it was a good learning curve."
New Zealand face Russia, Brazil and France in pool play and Horan expects to see immediate signs that other teams have improved.
Several gold medal-hungry nations have poured resources into women's sevens and Horan says improvement has been obvious across the first three years of the world series.
"Day one in Dubai is always pretty hectic, where you'll get some teams that come out with a lot of excitement and some decent quality," he said.
"There can be some anxiety from our players around that but we have to be confident about what we've been doing."
Canada and Australia, who won the two tournaments at the end of last season, are expected to be New Zealand's stiffest opponents.
New Zealand are missing experienced attacking back Kayla McAlister (foot) and playmaker Selica Winiata (back) this week, while injury has also sidelined Charlotte Scanlan, Stacey Waaka, Lesley Ketu and Alexis Tapsell.
Captain Sarah Goss leads a core of fit regulars which includes Portia Woodman, Tyla Nathan-Wong and Kelly Brazier.
Among the rookie faces is uncapped Niall Williams, the younger sister of cross code star Sonny Bill Williams.
AFP