A Sophie de Goede (Canada) is on the road to recovery from her ACL injury. It occurred as she was preparing for the last Olympics (Canada won silver in the 7s). To miss the 2025 RWC as well would be a double misfortune.
She is now training harder than ever. The Maple Leafs are hoping to see her back in action soon. The Pacific Four is not on the cards for her, but the tour to South Africa in July may be.
Saracens would be quite pleased to see her back in their side too.
B Why should three leading English players, Amy Cokayne, Meg Jones and Charlotte Fray, all choose to leave Leicester Tigers, Jones for Trailfinders, the other two for Sale Sharks? The three clubs finished seventh, eighth and ninth out of nine in last season’s PWR league. The Tigers’ future looks bleak.
C Two more matches have been completed in the WER:
TC Gemini 19 Denver Onyx 38
New York Breakers 19 Boston Banshees 39
My hunch that Onyx would carry all before them still holds good (5/5 wins to date).
You might call these two fixtures “derbies”. The distances involved come to around 915 and 215 miles – only.
D Rugby Europe Women’s Conference: Norway 0 Latvia 27. It’s the Conference that provides the first stepping stones for nations that want to climb to the top of the European tree.
E The first of two innovative matches saw Canada’s Under 20s beat Ireland 26-15 in Dublin. A second match takes place on the 17th. This tour shows the progress being made in strengthening pathways.
F Serie A Elite final: Valsugana 5 Villorba 15. Villorba won their second successive title. Player of the match was the inexhaustible Sara Barattin.
Two of the three leading clubs in Italy met at Benetton Treviso’s ground. Colorno was the one to miss out. One oddity is to see the Benetton side finishing the season in seventh place out of eight.
G Las Leonas of Spain are looking forward to meeting the world No 1s at Leicester on 2 August. They have a decent excuse for their lukewarm performance against the Springboks (26-48): they had been restricted to a couple of training sessions and the squad contained a number of new faces. Then the question arises: why was it impossible to prepare better?
H The two games the Black Ferns will play in South Africa (on 26 July and 2 August) involve the “Black Ferns XV”, all part of the high performance pathway initiated two years ago. It remains to be seen how many of the squad will be new faces and how many already capped players the BF management want to see more of.
I France’s warm-up match against England is the only one the FFR has announced so far. But the players face an extensive preparation schedule:
23-27 June: training sessions at Marcoussis
30 June-9 July: training sessions at Marcoussis
14-23 July: training sessions at Tignes in the Alps (preparing for typical English August weather?)
30 July-8 August: training sessions at Marcoussis
9 August: v England at Mont de Marsan
16 August: departure for Exeter
So much for Rest and Recuperation.
