SUNDERLAND — Against the backdrop of Shy FX & T Power’s lyrics and an ever-intensifying drizzle, the Red Roses went through their final preparations in front of empty red and white seats at the Stadium of Light.
A few players kicked a football, others warmed up, and there was laughter. It was Thursday late morning, and watching England, they appeared to be free of pressure as they went through their eve of tournament captain’s run ahead of their match with the United States. But come Friday night, and the start of the 2025 Women’s Rugby World Cup, the expectation around this England team will crank up several notches.
Rarely has there been a tournament where there has been such an overwhelming favourite. That’s the status you earn when you’ve lost just one of your last 60 matches and have a winning run stretching to 26 on the bounce. But there will be 15 teams looking to halt them in their tracks over the next five weeks in what will be by far the biggest World Cup to date.
A total of 375,000 tickets have been sold so far; roughly 80% of the total allocation. For context, in 2017, a total of 45,412 tickets were sold for the entire 30-match tournament — a figure just short of the crowd expected to watch England face the United States on Friday in Sunderland.
This will be the tournament where either the Red Roses cement their status as the sport’s most dominant team, or it will be the competition which sees the most monumental upset. It will be the World Cup of U.S. superstar Ilona Maher, of the wonderous Ellie Kildunne and another chapter for the timeless Portia Woodman-Wickliffe. It will be the stage for youngsters like Australia’s Waiaria Ellis and New Zealand’s Jorja Miller to thrive. It will be the World Cup where pros mix with semi-pros and amateurs. The tournament will stretch the length and breadth of England — from Sunderland in the far north to Brighton in the deep south.
World Rugby is eager to emphasise this tournament will be different to anything you’ve seen before.
They don’t want to copy the men’s model: instead, this will be personality-first. Each team has content creators embedded within them, bringing fans and new spectators into the squad and introducing them to new role models. We’ll see more female coaches than ever (32% up from 15% in 2021), while the final at a sold-out Twickenham will have an all-female grounds staff.
All this just a month or so after the Lionesses’ success in Switzerland teed up the potential for the most incredible golden summer for women’s sport in the UK.
Make no mistake about it, the pressure is on the Red Roses.
Anything other than a tournament win would be a shock and a rugby disaster for them. Some players in the squad have never tasted a Test defeat. Others have only the 2022 World Cup final loss to New Zealand as their reference point for rugby devastation. So it’s against that backdrop where they come into their home tournament.
They have incredible strength in depth, a wonderful captain to boot in Zoe Aldcroft and the mesmeric centre Meg Jones. Kildunne and several others should be like Leah Williamson, Chloe Kelly or Ella Toone as established cross-sport household names by the end of the tournament.
Their backroom staff includes Sarah Hunter, captain of the team in both 2017 and 2021, as defence coach. A talk from her and you’d be ready to run through brick walls.
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While form and logic dictate they should win the whole thing, pressure does curious things.
Their buzzword is “cohesion,” as John Mitchell said on Wednesday, while he is also aware of the responsibility which comes with delivering in a home tournament. “It’s a huge vehicle for us to have presence,” Mitchell said. “We start the tour equal like everyone else. Being favourites is irrelevant to us. We’ve just got to earn the right each week.”
They talked about the Six Nations Grand Slam triumph as being their base camp for their eventual attempt at summiting rugby’s Everest. That’s the aim, but there’s also the wider significance of their journey. For captain Aldcroft, she hopes this tournament will be “the starting point to absolutely boom [interest in the sport].”
But England are just one of 16 teams here, and if you’re looking for other potential winners then you can bracket Canada and New Zealand there too.
Canada are ranked No. 2 in the world, complete with their outstanding back-rower Sophie de Goede. They head to England buoyed by their 42-10 win over the U.S. which played out in front of a then-record crowd for a women’s rugby match in North America, with 11,453 wishing them on their way in Ottawa. All this with Rugby Canada crowdfunding the team’s journey via “Mission: Win Rugby World Cup” where they’ve looked to raise funds as they’ve been “operating on only a fraction of the budget of our top competition,” as they’ve put it.
For New Zealand, the Black Ferns are reigning champions, and have won six of the last seven World Cup titles. They’ve endured a sticky spell since that famous night in Eden Park in November. 2022 where they shattered England’s hearts with that 34-31 triumph.
They have Woodman-Wickliffe back in their ranks — one of the greatest players the game has seen — and despite a tough run from October 2023 to November 2024 where they lost six from 10, they’re back at their formidable best. Coach Allan Bunting promising the world this is a different and improved New Zealand team to the one we’ve seen since their last golden moment.
Their neighbours Australia are less successful in XV than sevens but will fancy their chances of making the knockouts complete with 17-year-old prodigy Ellis, but will do it without the injured Charlotte Caslick while sevens star Maddison Levi stayed in the shorter form of the game.
The home nations will have differing hopes. Ireland will be targeting a semifinal spot — and from there who knows what next — but will be without key players Dorothy Wall and Erin King. They do have the outstanding back-row Aoife Wafer with her incredible scoring record of 12 tries in 15 Tests but she faces a race against time to recover from knee surgery last month.
Having failed to qualify for the 2022 World Cup, this team — backed by the “Green Wave” — will be looking to put things right in England. They have an inexperienced squad — with just Cliodhna Moloney-MacDonald the sole representative from the 2017 crop — but know they can beat the best having overcome New Zealand 29-27 in Sept. 2024.
Wales are settling under new coach Sean Lynn after a turbulent spell which saw the WRU coming under fire for their hard-line tactics in 2024 as they gave players an ultimatum to sign new contracts or risk cancelling matches. That saw a raft of departures, and Lynn is the perfect man to lead them forward.
They’re showing some improvement having beaten Australia 21-12 in July. They’ll have some sympathy for Pool B neighbours Scotland who are going through their own contract strife with the Scottish Rugby Union. Contract discussions were carrying on to the 11th hour, and to date — according to those in the camp, just over half the current squad are going to be without a contract after the World Cup, while coach Bryan Easson’s deal is also up.
In short, it’s far from ideal.
“My ethos as a captain is to make my players feel like superwomen, it’s to make them feel valued and like they belong,” Scotland captain Rachel Malcolm said in July. “And the processes which have gone on behind the scenes have definitely done almost the opposite of those three things, so it’s definitely made my job a little bit tougher.”
Elsewhere, Brazil are featuring in their first ever XVs women’s World Cup while Fiji are in their second edition. There are stories aplenty of inspirational tales, and the amateur status of so many players at the tournament means the everyday is mixed with the exceptional.
Take Brazil’s Samara Vergara — who is an animator/tattooist by day, and fullback by night.
Canada’s Olivia DeMerchant is a firefighter, while Samoa’s Nina Foaese is a social worker and mother of three.
Over in South Africa, read about the remarkable story of Mary Zulu, who was left outside care centre as a newborn and is now one of two fly-halves in their squad. South Africa are backing their pack to deliver with the best of them, all this eight years after the SARU decided not to enter them for the 2017 World Cup due to poor results. They’re paired with France – who will have eyes on a run late into the tournament having come within a point of reaching the final in 2022. They’re a team who have never quite lived up to their potential and will look to repair that with Italy also standing in their way.
And then there’s Maher and the U.S.. Maher is by far the most-followed player in rugby on social media with 8.8 million followers across Instagram and TikTok. Her influence and personality is ushering in a siege change in mentality around the sport, and the phrase “a high tide raises all boats” is apt here as her teammates are using her example to push their own social channels and grow fresh fanbases.
“This is a time where women’s rugby is in a state where it could grow massively and I do believe this team is at the forefront with how we present ourselves and people’s perception of us,” Maher said on Wednesday. “We want more people to have eyes on the game and it will be great to see more stadiums sold out.”
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Ilona Maher: You can’t slip up against England
USA’s Ilona Maher looks ahead to the opening game of the 2025 Women’s Rugby World Cup vs. England.
This will be the World Cup of Maher. She already has the Olympic bronze medal to her name from Paris 2024 – now it’s her turn in outside centre for the U.S.
She lines up in Sunderland on Friday evening where the U.S. are heavy underdogs against England. That will be the starting point for five weeks of rugby which so many hope will be the launchpad to push the sport further and wider into global consciousness. Before the World Cup started, World Rugby published the findings of a report into what they call a “blueprint for growth in women’s rugby.” They have key action points which include making it impossible to miss women’s rugby, empowering the players to tell their stories, grow the pathway, capture new fan’s attention and give fans more opportunities to watch the game’s stars. That’s the rough plan to capitalise on this bounce in interest, but for those on the field, talk of legacy can wait.
The spotlight will be on the sport like never before over the next five weeks, and it’ll be brighter than ever on the hosts. England’s mantra at the tournament is “For the Girls.” But they’re also doing it for themselves. There’s a feeling the destination of this tournament’s trophy is already pre-ordained. But sporting unpredictability is what keeps us gripped. Just when you think you know how a movie’s going to end, there’s always that late twist or turn. England will hope it’s a straightforward path to lifting the trophy in front of a sold-out Twickenham on Sept. 27. But there are 15 other nations who are looking to twist the narrative into their favour.
