Women's Rugby World Cup 2025, Week 1, Supplement

Reviews of the matches I didn’t watch over the weekend

Canada v Fiji

This is a match, like so many others, that featured a giant v minnows. Canada are currently ranked second in the world, Fiji somewhere in the teens. Like the other matches in these categories, scrums tended to be an issue, although they weren’t as bad as some, and the Fijian lineouts were pretty good. As you would expect, ball handling was pretty good too.

What let the Fijians down was mostly speed of thought and details of execution. Canada could easily concentrate the Fijian defensive line, and then run around the outside of it - it looked like a sevens defence but with more bodies - and worse than the scrummaging was the kicking from hand - it was usually really short, or out on the full, or both.

Fiji had moments, and stretched Canada, they scored possibly the try of the tournament as well, and will trouble both Scotland and particularly Wales in their other pool games. But they’re just too inconsistent and give up too many opportunities.

Schell, the Canadian full back, came close to equaling Portia Woodman-Wickliffe's record of eight tries in a RWC game, scoring six, and all in the second half! On the scoreboard the Black Ferns result was never in doubt, but through the first half at least, and even into the second, it felt like more even than the scores. This match never felt even, more that Fiji had a few good minutes.

Brazil v South Africa

Both these teams are, really, minnows, with short histories of the women’s game in their countries, it’s slightly longer in SA - they were at the RWC in New Zealand - but they’d only been playing for about 18 months at the time. The Brazilians have actually been playing for longer, since the noughties (set up to compete in the sevens at the Rio Olympics), but they’ve got no infrastructure and have been bumping around in the 20’s and 30’s of the world rankings for all that time, so this is their first appearance at a World Cup. By contrast, South Africa are piggybacking off the men's infrastructure in country, although many of the best players in both countries are playing abroad, mostly in Japan.

Brazil play decent Sevens, and actually executed that at that times. South Africa have a game plan that looks familiar to anyone who has watched the men’s game over the years. This is pre-Rassie Bokke rugby: lots of big humans charging at you, with a few smaller, very fast ones out wide. If you think of Habana-era rugby, it will look very familiar.

Sadly, as is almost always the case, playing pragmatic XV’s when you’re actually playing with fifteen on the pitch, is superior to playing 7’s. I don’t know whether SA can take the game to Italy (definitely not France) I’m not sure, but that match, on Sunday, might be interesting. France v Brazil, a bit later on might be more of a cricket score.