At 7:30 am Italian time on Saturday morning, at Eden Park in Auckland, the England and New Zealand women’s national teams will play the final of the Rugby World Cup. It will be a final between the two most successful teams in the history of women’s rugby, one in difficulty and the other on the rise; it will be a clash between two very different styles of play, one airy and strenuous, the other rough and stubborn. It will be played in front of 40 thousand spectators, more than in any other match in the history of women’s rugby, at the conclusion of a World Cup that could represent a turning point for the movement.
The first Women’s World Cup – officially recognized as such only a few years later – was played in 1991 in Wales. The United States won – which fared better in women’s rugby than in men’s – after beating New Zealand in the semifinals and England in the final in front of no more than three thousand people.
Since the next edition, the World Cup has never again been won by a team other than England or New Zealand. In 1994 England won, but New Zealand did not participate. For four editions, from 1998 to 2010, New Zealand won: and three times out of four they did so by beating England in the final. In 2014 the World Cup was won by England again, and New Zealand unexpectedly dropped out of the group. In the last edition, in a tournament with an average of less than two thousand spectators per game, New Zealand won again, again in the final with England.
The teams in the last final between England and New Zealand (Getty Images)
In short, for most of the last thirty years, the New Zealand women’s national team has dominated its sport, in a way and with a consistency that very few other teams in other sports have managed to have. Numbers in hand, for a long time the New Zealand women’s rugby team was even more dominant than the men’s team, the All Blacks, which from 1903 to 2021 won 77 percent of the official matches played.
The New Zealand players are nicknamed Black Ferns (“black ferns”) in reference to one of the symbols of the country. In their history they have won more than 85 percent of the matches played, have been beaten by only four national teams and in the World Cup they have won 33 out of 35 matches.
In recent years, however, New Zealand has struggled: partly due to the pandemic that isolated the team and prevented the organization of many matches, and partly due to the success of other national teams, also thanks to the passage of many professional players. In recent months there has been talk of various problems, not just sports. In 2021, Black Ferns lost four games in a row, including two defeats against England: 43-12 and 56-15. The team was in such a bad shape that for the first time in its history a world final was in danger of being out of reach.
At this home World Cup, the first to be held in the southern hemisphere, New Zealand won with relative ease against Australia, Wales and Scotland (57-0) and again against Wales in the quarter-finals, game in which winger Portia Woodman became the best scorer ever in the history of the competition. The semifinal was much more complicated and exciting, in which New Zealand won 25-24 against France, who missed the decisive kick that would have taken them ahead, and therefore in the final, one minute from the end.
The big favorite for this World Cup – which should have taken place in 2021 – has therefore been England for some time, with players who have become professionals even before the New Zealanders.
The English are known as the Red Roses, as the symbol of national rugby, and have come a long way since losing 67-0 to New Zealand in 1997. The first victory against the Black Ferns, arrived in 2009, was followed by several others, accompanied in recent years by a rather clear dominance. England arrived at this World Cup after thirty consecutive victories: the last defeat, against New Zealand, was in the summer of 2019, before the pandemic.
Winning the World Cup was the team’s clear goal even before the competition began, and Simon Middleton, the coach since 2015, spoke of the desire for the Red Roses to become ‘the best team in the world of all sports. “.
In the semifinals they struggled a lot to win 26-19 against Canada, after a tense and hard-fought game. Commenting on the two World Cup semi-finals, both played last Saturday, the envoy of Guardian Robert Kitson wrote:
It will be enough that the final is at least half as interesting as these semi-finals, which marked one of the best days in the history of the Women’s World Cup. Indeed, we delete the adjective “female”: of the World Cup in general.
An English maul against New Zealand in 2016 (Richard Heathcote / Getty Images)
England has often won thanks to his maul – when the ball carrier is held back by one or more opponents and is supported in the advance by the push of her teammates – and more generally thanks to an approach based on physical domination and the constant search for contact. “Three things are certain in life. Death, taxes and England that in this World Cup goes to the goal by advancing thanks to his rolling maulKitson wrote.
The British manage, in other words, to take the ball where they know they are strongest and to create specific game situations that allow them to advance slowly but often, for their opponents, inexorably. “For victims trapped in the great white anaconda there is often no escape,” Kitson wrote before the semifinal, in which the Canadians sometimes managed to make the British tactics creak.
For some observers, winning like this is comparable to making the bolt in football: therefore in a conservative, unspectacular and result-oriented way, the opposite of the game historically associated with southern hemisphere teams and in particular with New Zealand. Regarding the English game, Kitson wrote: «Whether you like it or not depends on your nationality and what you consider to be entertainment in rugby, but it cannot be denied that those maul are of brutal technical excellence “.
Sarah Hunter, England’s captain and third-row player, of which she is the player with the most appearances, said the important thing is to win and that “in the end no one will go back and look at how we did our goals.” The manager, Middleton, added: “That southern hemisphere rugby is fantastic, but we belong to another hemisphere and we base our game on our strengths.”
Ruby Tui (Joe Allison/Getty Images)
When they play well, the Black Ferns play faster and more technical rugby, more aesthetically pleasing and easier to appreciate even for the less experienced. In addition to Woodman, among the most representative players are Kendra Cocksedge, Sarah Hirini and Ruby Tui, the latter described by Wayne Smith – former player and coach of the All Blacks, with whom she won two World Cups – as “phenomenal” , as well as one of the ten best athletes, male or female, with whom he has ever dealt.
The final on Saturday will therefore be yet another confrontation between the two strongest teams in the world, the rematch of the 2017 final (in which England were in the lead but then got themselves back together and overcome) and the challenge between two styles and philosophies. game almost literally at the antipodes.
The English are the favorites, but it must be taken into account that they will play in front of a number of spectators never reached before, in a stadium – Eden Park – which is an integral part of the history of local rugby and which will almost entirely support the home team. And in that same exhausted stadium, before a world final, the English will have to attend the haka of the opponents: which for some years now has been the Uhia Maia variant designed specifically for them.
For New Zealand, a home win would mark the beginning of a rebirth, moreover at a time when the All Blacks are struggling a lot. And even without all the precedents, even those who don’t know anything about rugby understand what it means to win the Rugby World Cup in New Zealand against New Zealand.
In addition to all this, the final (which due to time zones will be, like the whole World Cup, difficult to follow from Italy, but can be seen on Rai and Sky) is presented as historic: for the number of spectators but also because it is the first women’s rugby world final in which two teams of professional players compete against each other, in a tournament in which several other national teams were still made up of amateur players. But also as the possible beginning of a new approach to women’s rugby: with more and more professionals and more and more sponsors and spectators.
“In 2010, nobody knew what Black Ferns were,” said Ruby Tui. “We were told that we would never get paid, that we would never play at Eden Park, that women’s rugby didn’t matter, and instead here we are.”
This World Cup had a total of almost 150 thousand paying spectators, triple the previous one. The next one will be held in 2025 in England, with a final scheduled at Twickenham, the national rugby stadium. Also Twickenham, in April 2023, will host for the first time in its history the last match of the Women’s Six Nations between England and France.
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