1
Ioan Cunningham excited for Wales' future despite World Cup quarter-final exit
By PA
Wales’ Rugby World Cup campaign was ended by Portia Woodman and New Zealand on Saturday morning but coach Ioan Cunningham will leave the tournament proud of the progress his side have made and excited about the future in front of them.
Woodman scored her 19th and 20th career World Cup tries to break Sue Day’s record as the dominant Black Ferns cruised to a 55-3 quarter-final win, showing far too much pace and power for Wales to live with.
But Wales always knew the scale of the task facing them in this match and Cunningham’s sights are set further down the line for a team that has only been professional for a few months.
“(The gap) is still fairly big obviously, the scoreboard doesn’t lie,” Cunningham said on ITV.
“The instensity, speed, they sustain it for 80 minutes and that’s somewhere we’ve got to get to. But I’m so proud of the girls and their effort, especially in the first half.
“We asked them to front up physically and they did, we hassled them and forced them into errors and I’m really proud of their effort.
“We came here to get out of the pool and we achieved that, to reach the quarter-final is brilliant.
“I’m super excited and proud to be part of this group. There’s so much effort, commitment and sacrifice from the players. We’ve only been pro as a group since January and it’s exciting where we can go looking forward for the next few years and maybe more success at the 2025 World Cup.”
New Zealand advance to the semi-finals and a meeting with France, who will be the next to try to find a way to stop the thrilling combination of Woodman, Ruby Tui and Ayesha Leti-I’iga.
“I think it’s even more fun than it looks,” Tui said on the spirit in the New Zealand team.
“This team has been through so much but we just want to show that women’s rugby is a product worth watching, we’ve all got our stories but we just want to entertain.
“If I could pick two wingers in the entire world to stand next to on the pitch it would be ‘P’ and Ayesha. It’s a dream. They’re two amazing players but actually really cool people who I know would have my back if anything happened off the field.
“They’re both horrible to tackle equally. I could not pick which one I would rather get a stinger from. The cool thing is they don’t care about the records.
“They’re both humble humans but they’re also breaking records and selling out stadiums being awesome while they’re doing it.”
Trending on RugbyPass
2
Wallaroos captain reflects on Black Ferns’ success with sevens stars
3
Springboks flyhalf's latest injury worry
4
Initial Immanuel Feyi-Waboso injury update does not sound promising
5
Latest Comments
The boy needs to bulk up if wants to play 10 or 11 to handle those hits, otherwise he could always make a brilliant reserve for the wings if he stays away from the stretcher.
Go to commentsIn another recent article I tried to argue for a few key concept changes for EPCR which I think could light the game up in the North.
First, I can't remember who pointed out the obvious elephant in the room (a SA'n poster?), it's a terrible time to play rugby in the NH, and especially your pinnacle tournament. It's been terrible watching with seemingly all the games I wanted to watch being in the dark, hardly able to see what was going on. The Aviva was the only stadium I saw that had lights that could handle the miserable rain. If the global appeal is there, they could do a lot better having day games.
They other primary idea I thuoght would benefit EPCR most, was more content. The Prem could do with it and the Top14 could do with something more important than their own league, so they aren't under so much pressure to sell games. The quality over quantity approach.
Trim it down to two 16 team EPCR competitions, and introduce a third for playing amongst the T2 sides, or the bottom clubs in each league should simply be working on being better during the EPCR.
Champions Cup is made up of league best 15 teams, + 1, the Challenge Cup winner. Without a reason not to, I'd distribute it evenly based on each leauge, dividing into thirds and rounded up, 6 URC 5 Top14 4 English. Each winner (all four) is #1 rank and I'd have a seeding round or two for the other 12 to determine their own brackets for 2nd, 3rd, and 4th. I'd then hold a 6 game pool, home and away, with consecutive of each for those games that involve SA'n teams. Preferrably I'd have a regional thing were all SA'n teams were in the same pool but that's a bit complex for this simple idea.
That pool round further finalises the seeding for knockout round of 16. So #1 pool has essentially duked it out for finals seeding already (better venue planning), and to see who they go up against 16, 15,etc etc. Actually I think I might prefer a single pool round for seeding, and introduce the home and away for Ro16, quarters, and semis (stuffs up venue hire). General idea to produce the most competitive matches possible until the random knockout phase, and fix the random lottery of which two teams get ranked higher after pool play, and also keep the system identical for the Challenge Cup so everthing is succinct. Top T2 side promoted from last year to make 16 in Challenge Cup
Go to comments