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WXV: ‘Every minute contributes to the betterment of each player'
By Anna Caplice
With the third and final weekend of WXV tournaments about to kick off, we are in for yet another weekend-long feast of rugby as the time zones offer game time from Friday evening all the way through to the small hours of Sunday morning.
There are some feisty matchups across all three divisions with WXV2 almost being the hardest to call. Australia and Scotland have both been chomping at the bit for this final showdown and top-of-the-table clash.
A win for either side will see them lift the trophy. (With Australia currently two points ahead Scotland will have to win with a bonus point to avoid any mathematical challenges to the result.) It’s all to play for and all bets are off!
With almost a certain bonus point win on the cards for Samoa against the inexperienced yet dogged Madagascar, they will be relying on Fiji to knock Spain off the top spot if they want to get their hands on the WXV3 title.
Having narrowly missed out on the title to Ireland last year, Spain will be determined not to let this one slip through their fingers, but having a team like Fiji standing in your way, especially with wounds to heal from their loss to Samoa last week, again, bets are off!
The top-tier competition is as heated as the rest. France and New Zealand: a match up for the ages. Both teams will be eyeing up the other’s shaky form and hoping they can force it to be replicated on Saturday.
The last time these two met at a World Cup, France missed a kick in the final moments of the World Cup semi-final that would have sent them through to the final for the first time ever. A few inches of difference and history would have been written in a very different way.
With England having lost only one game out of their last 50 (that RWC final that New Zealand sneaked into) they are the team that are truly steamrolling through women’s rugby. If anyone has a chance of putting a stop to it, it is Canada.
Full of confidence, connection, energy and experience they will be licking their lips at having a crack at the best team in the world on their home soil. Let’s hope BC Place can rally to fill the stands for some well-earned home support in Vancouver.
Admittedly, I thought that this might be the first weekend that both Ireland and USA might be targeting for their first win of the tournament. At least, that’s what those of us on the outside thought until Ireland ripped the rug from underneath World Champions, New Zealand, and picked up a W straight away in week one.
USA and Ireland haven’t seen each other in some time, but with Ireland’s momentum gathering speed all the time, it will take a special performance for the USA to bring the green wave to a grinding halt. Ireland has the opportunity to finish in second position, a feat we may have thought unthinkable only a year ago when they lifted the WXV3 trophy by the skin of their teeth.
It’s been great so far. Seeing the women’s game covered extensively. Having people talk about the games and get to know their favourite players a bit more. Having our timelines filled with clips of fantastic tries, moves and momentous moments for emerging nations in the women’s game.
Having someone like Siya Kolisi use his platform to get the message out to his own fan base to come and support the Women Boks in Cape Town. (He is an amazing advocate for our game and not only was he seen supporting the South African girls in training and on match day, he was out chatting to players from all the WXV2 teams. He seemed to be a bit starstruck by Scotland’s Jade Konkel who is a firefighter on the side of being an international rugby player, and offered her massive praise.
Although the attendance across the board is definitely something that needs to be addressed for the future of this competition, it is a start. The more the quality and coverage of the game grows, the more the fans will come. And if there’s one thing that is going to drive the quality of this tournament more than anything else it is: Game time!
Game time! Game time! Game time! Show-stopping, heart-racing, adrenaline-filled, high-intensity, mentally demanding, physically challenging game time! Every minute of these tours, both on and off the pitch, contributes to the betterment of each player, coach and staff involved.
This is, after all, why WXV was created by World Rugby. More opportunities for more countries and players to play international Test-level rugby. So far, it has done exactly what it said on the tin.
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Latest Comments
They would improve a lot of such a scheme were allowed though JD, win win :p
Go to commentsI rated Lowe well enough to be an AB. Remember we were picking the likes of George Bridge above such players so theres no disputing a lot of bad decisions have been made by those last two coaches. Does a team like the ABs need a finicky winger who you have to adapt and change a lot of your style with to get benefit from? No, not really. But he still would have been a basic improvement on players like even Savea at the tail of his career, Bridge, and could even have converted into the answer of replacing Beauden at the back. Instead we persisted with NMS, Naholo, Havili, Reece, all players we would have cared even less about losing and all because Rieko had Lowe's number 11 jersey nailed down.
He was of course only 23 when he decided to leave, it was back in the beggining of the period they had started retaining players (from 2018 onwards I think, they came out saying theyre going to be more aggressive at some point). So he might, all of them, only just missed out.
The main point that Ed made is that situations like Lowe's, Aki's, JGP's, aren't going to happen in future. That's a bit of a "NZ" only problem, because those players need to reach such a high standard to be chosen by the All Blacks, were as a country like Ireland wants them a lot earlier like that. This is basically the 'ready in 3 years' concept Ireland relied on, versus the '5 years and they've left' concept' were that player is now ready to be chosen by the All Blacks (given a contract to play Super, ala SBW, and hopefully Manu).
The 'mercenary' thing that will take longer to expire, and which I was referring to, is the grandparents rule. The new kids coming through now aren't going to have as many gp born overseas, so the amount of players that can leave with a prospect of International rugby offer are going to drop dramatically at some point. All these kiwi fellas playing for a PI, is going to stop sadly.
The new era problem that will replace those old concerns is now French and Japanese clubs (doing the same as NRL teams have done for decades by) picking kids out of school. The problem here is not so much a national identity one, than it is a farm system where 9 in 10 players are left with nothing. A stunted education and no support in a foreign country (well they'll get kicked out of those countries were they don't in Australia).
It's the same sort of situation were NZ would be the big guy, but there weren't many downsides with it. The only one I can think was brought up but a poster on this site, I can't recall who it was, but he seemed to know a lot of kids coming from the Islands weren't really given the capability to fly back home during school xms holidays etc. That is probably something that should be fixed by the union. Otherwise getting someone like Fakatava over here for his last year of school definitely results in NZ being able to pick the cherries off the top but it also allows that player to develop and be able to represent Tonga and under age and possibly even later in his career. Where as a kid being taken from NZ is arguably going to be worse off in every respect other than perhaps money. Not going to develop as a person, not going to develop as a player as much, so I have a lotof sympathy for NZs case that I don't include them in that group but I certainly see where you're coming from and it encourages other countries to think they can do the same while not realising they're making a much worse experience/situation.
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