We want this: England captain Sarah Hunter poses with the World Cup ahead of the tournament in New Zealand
(Picture: AFP via Getty Images)Sarah Hunter’s England open their World Cup campaign in the early hours of tomorrow morning as one of the hottest favourites to leave these shores in British sporting history.
But the tournament is being played in New Zealand, where they take their rugby seriously — and the hosts are taking this global gathering very seriously indeed.
The Red Roses face Fiji in Auckland at 4.45am in their first pool game of the campaign on the back of a 25-Test winning streak — a record for the sport. Captain and No8 Hunter will win her 136th cap, leaving her one behind Rocky Clark’s all-time mark once Rita Ora has shuffled off stage after the opening ceremony in front of an expected 30,000-plus crowd.
Bookmakers rate the Red Roses as 2-1 on to lift the trophy at Eden Park on November 12, and something would have had to have gone very wrong for those odds to be overturned.
The 1994 and 2014 winners have been stewing since losing the 2017 final 41-32 to New Zealand in Belfast and the year delay in this tournament, postponed because of Covid, has only heightened their resolve. It has also heightened the pressure on England to deliver.
England have won the last four Six Nations, with Grand Slams in two of the last three, scored 99 points in hammering the Black Ferns twice last autumn and breezed through warm-up games against Wales and Ireland. Since 2019, they have been on full-time professional contracts and enjoy, barring the controversial economy flights to New Zealand, most the benefits bestowed on their male counterparts. So surely it is a matter of when they win, not if?
Not so fast. England’s Pool C opponents, apart from Fiji, are South Africa and France. South Africa are ranked 11th in the world, Fiji 21st and France — England’s only serious rivals in Europe — fifth. In the Six Nations, Hunter’s side won their first four games by a combined score of 258-10 before they met the French in Bayonne and only edged home 24-12. If Antoine Dupont, the scrum-half, is the darling of the men’s game over the Channel, Laure Sansus, again a No9 and player of that tournament, is the female standard bearer.
The #RedRoses team to face Fiji on Saturday has been named 🌹#TeamDream | #ENGvFIJI
— England Rugby (@EnglandRugby) October 5, 2022
The Kiwis lie in wait in the knockout stages and the hosts have upped the ante. They have won the tournament five times since 1998 but were stung by those defeats to England last year and have called up some serious cavalry.
Head coach is Wayne Smith, one of the shrewdest brains in the game. Smith, a former All Blacks fly-half, was part of the coaching team that helped Richie McCaw’s team win back-to-back World Cups, landed Super Rugby titles with Crusaders and Chiefs and is still revered at Northampton after a stint there between 2001 and 2004. The Black Ferns also have scrum expert Mike Cron, who has 15 years with New Zealand under his belt; Graham Henry has been brought in as a consultant and Dan Carter has been lending his expertise.
England’s build-up has not been ideal. Harlequins prop Shaunagh Brown was ruled out of the opening game with Covid, veteran flanker Marlie Packer has an ankle injury and 20-year-old Sadia Kabeya starts in the back row after finishing a week of isolation.
The Red Roses should get their tournament off to a flying start. Then, only pressure, or the French or the Black Ferns, can stop them.
