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Hosts New Zealand, France storm into Rugby World Cup Quarter Finals
By AAP
New Zealand have secured top seeding for the Women's Rugby World Cup quarter-finals with an emphatic bonus-point 57-0 win over Scotland in Whangarei.
The Black Ferns had already sealed a last-eight spot with earlier group wins over Australia and Wales, and made themselves the top-ranked team in the playoffs with Saturday's win by nine tries to nil.
France then recovered well from their bruising loss to England a week ago to coast into the knockout round with a 44-0 win over Fiji, which also eliminated the Pacific Islanders.
"It was a great game, we are very happy. Now we have to work hard for the quarter-finals," France forward Coco Lindelauf said.
"Fiji really play rugby, they have a feeling for rugby and it was a great game. From now on its knockout, who wins goes to the semi-finals so we have to win."
New Zealand set out to play high octane rugby from the start and produced their best performance of the tournament by far, an almost flawless di splay of 15-woman rugby. Though fielding a line-up with several changes from the match against Wales, they clicked from the outset and proved too much for the Scotland defence who faced wave after wave of attacks.
The host nation had their first try in less than two minutes and added three more to lead 24-0 after only 18. Veteran winger Renee Wickliffe, playing at her fourth World Cup, had a double before the break including a brilliant solo try in which she swerved around the Scotland fullback.
By halftime, the Kiwis had carried for almost 600 meters and Scotland for fewer than 30. While their backplay shone, New Zealand also fielded a much-improved scrum ahead of the playoffs.
The Black Ferns took 13 minutes to score the first try of the second half and when they did, through Maia Roos, they passed 50 points for the second time in the group stage. Fullback Renee Holmes made the game symmetrical with the last try after scoring the first.
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Latest Comments
Nah, that just needs some more variation. Chip kicks, grubber stabs, all those. Will Jordan showed a pretty good reason why the rush was bad for his link up with BB.
If you have an overlap on a rush defense, they naturally cover out and out and leave a huge gap near the ruck.
It also helps if both teams play the same rules. ARs set the offside line 1m past where the last mans feet were😅
Go to commentsYeah nar, should work for sure. I was just asking why would you do it that way?
It could be achieved by outsourcing all your IP and players to New Zealand, Japan, and America, with a big Super competition between those countries raking it in with all of Australia's best talent to help them at a club level. When there is enough of a following and players coming through internally, and from other international countries (starting out like Australia/without a pro scene), for these high profile clubs to compete without a heavy australian base, then RA could use all the money they'd saved over the decades to turn things around at home and fund 4 super sides of their own that would be good enough to compete.
That sounds like a great model to reset the game in Aus. Take a couple of decades to invest in youth and community networks before trying to become professional again. I just suggest most aussies would be a bit more optimistic they can make it work without the two decades without any pro club rugby bit.
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