Red Roses needed win to silence naysayers, but hope remains
Sport is cut-throat, and England’s Red Roses rugby team learned that on Saturday in their 34-31 World Cup final loss to New Zealand in Auckland.
Down a player for 60 minutes, after winger Lydia Thompson was red carded for making contact with the head of Portia Woodman, Simon Middleton’s England were put on the back foot.
And, ironically, it was their strongest asset on their route to the final, the line-out maul, that let them down in the final seconds at Eden Park.
A record crowd of over 42,000 watched as England hooker Lark Davies threw a line out with the clock in the red. It had worked all game and the Black Ferns hadn’t competed for much of the opening 79 minutes.
Defining
But when it mattered, Black Fern Joanah Ngan-Woo got up in front of Red Rose Abbie Ward, won the host nation the ball and seconds later, the World Cup.
“This game doesn’t define us,” Red Roses captain Sarah Hunter said following the agonising defeat. But it does, doesn’t it?
Big finals, marginal moments and cruel losses do define players – those moments make and break them. This match will live long into the memory of every Red Rose and Black Fern on that pitch – it’ll be what some use to motivate them at the next World Cup and, fortunately or unfortunately, it will be what some of the players take with them into retirement.
“I can honestly say how much it hurts to lose a World Cup final,” Kat Marchant, who has previously won and lost World Cup finals, said.
“It broke me and I thought about it every day for four years.”
And England will be broken. They should have won it. They needed to win it – if nothing else to prove to naysayers that the monumental investment from the Rugby Football Union was worthwhile.
Questions on the line
Will head coach Middleton and his staff still be in their posts? Will the RFU pump more money into the game, given what others have achieved with less? Was this year’s World Cup, where England were so far ahead of anybody else, the Red Roses’ optimal opportunity before more sides get competitive? These are questions that will warrant answers in the coming weeks and months.
But what provides certainty for women’s rugby in the hours and days that have followed New Zealand’s triumph is the bumper support for the sport.
Prior to this tournament many were already looking at England 2025, where there’s hope of a sell-out, 80,000 capacity crowd for the final and healthy attendances in the lead-up.
England is the country with the most advanced domestic game, where internationals the world over want to play.
It’s set up to be an event that capitalises on the shattering of a glass ceiling in the last six weeks. And it’s an event that will leave many of the Red Roses desperate to succeed.
So New Zealand are world champions, and become the first hosts to win a home World Cup.