We already know seven of the eight quarter-finalists: Canada, England, France, Ireland, New Zealand, Scotland and South Africa. They are the teams with two blameless victories. The fun starts with the thrilling 31-31 draw between Australia and the USA. The Wallaroos are the short-odds favourites to advance: they have 5-point lead in the pool table
Full house! 1 August. HIH Princess Akita, Patron of JRFU, to attend two Japan matches 1 August. Deborah Griffin elected first female President of the RFU 1 August. Australia 36 Wales 5 (Sydney) 2 August. France announce 32 players for 2025 RWC 3 August. South Africa 5 New Zealand XV 24 (series 1-1) 4 August.
The game of the tournament. Two sides with high ambitions, but not yet at the top of the class. A win could help make a safe passage through to the quarters. Few of the large crowd at York imagined the drama to come. The Wallaroos made the first move. The forwards drove hard, and the
Cymru were on a hiding to nothing, and even the fates turned against them. Who could imagine both their newly-minted co-captains, Alex Callender and Kate Williams, succumbing to injury? Beth Lewis took charge. As so often, they started well; they reached to two metres from the line; but Canadian confidence shone through as Alex Tessier
If you watched Scotland playing around a decade ago, you wouldn’t recognise the present product. It’s far from perfect, but marks a huge advance. They have a pack that can look after itself and backs, led by Emma Orr and Francesca McGhie, who score the bulk of their tries. Fiji weren’t there to make up
England may have finished the easy winners we all expected, but no-one should deny Samoa’s right to be there. They played throughout with pride and courage. A much changed Red Roses side took three minutes to secure their first score through Meg Jones. Two debutants, Lilli ives Campion with a clean take, then Jade Shekells
Loughborough Lightning have made five personnel changes and one positional switch to their starting line-up for this weekend’s East Midlands Derby with Leicester Tigers. The African Violets fell to defeat in their PWR: The Cup Round 1 against Sale Sharks – despite tries from Meg Davey, Ellen Scantlebury, Cieron Bell, as well as a try
Ella Fowler (aged 15) eats, sleeps and breathes rugby – it is her world! The Women’s World Cup will be the highlight of Ella’s whole year. She is a Red Roses fan through and through and one day she hopes to be on that grassy stage herself – we hope to be there to cheer
The crucial issue for the Red Roses was, who was fit to play? The good news is that Helena Rowland, Claudia Moloney-Macdonald and Mackenzie Carson are all aboard, Rowland slotting in at 10 for a change. That means in turn that Holly Aitchison is still AWOL. Two players. Abi Burton and Lilli ives Campion make
Kevin Rouet becomes the first coach to reveal his side for his second match. The assumption has been all along, head coaches would make wholesale changes across the three group-stage games, if only to give all 32 players an outing. It hasn’t quite worked out like that in this case. Here’s the squad to play
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