The Women’s Rugby World Cup Begins: England Seeks the Throne
This Friday, Sunderland’s ‘Stadium of Light’ will be the stage for the tenth edition of the Women’s Rugby World Cup. The tournament kicks off with an uneven match between the United States and England, the host nation and the main candidate to dethrone New Zealand, which has dominated the championship with six titles in the last seven editions.
England, runner-up in the two most recent World Cups and champion in 2014, arrives as the favorite. In addition, they have demonstrated their supremacy in Europe by winning the Six Nations in the last seven years, maintaining a perfect winning record.
The United States, for its part, will seek to revive the successes of the nineties, when it was crowned champion in the inaugural edition of the World Cup.
Beyond England and New Zealand, the options for other teams seem limited. France, who came close to beating New Zealand in the 2021 semi-finals and England in the last Six Nations, is going through a complicated situation in its locker room. Its position in third place could be threatened by Canada, instead of competing with the two favorites.
The four mentioned selections (England, New Zealand, France, and Canada) are the seeded teams and are expected to play in the semi-finals. The tournament will feature 16 teams divided into four groups, with the top two from each group advancing to the quarter-finals.
Here’s how the groups are formed:
- Group A: England, United States, Samoa, and Australia.
- Group B: Canada, Fiji, Wales, and Scotland.
- Group C: New Zealand, Spain, Japan, and Ireland.
- Group D: France, South Africa, Brazil, and Italy.
The Spanish selection, absent from the last edition of New Zealand 2021, returns with the ambition of reaching the quarter-finals, something they haven’t achieved since 2002, when they were hosts. To achieve this, they must overcome Japan and Ireland, against whom they lost by only two points less than two years ago.
The team led by Juan González Marruecos, although with little experience in world championships, arrives undefeated in the last four editions of the European Championship. They will have to demonstrate their progress, evidenced in important victories against high-level rivals such as Fiji.
