A dream of a day for English rugby, from the wide-eyed crowds streaming into Twickenham at 11am, five hours before kick-off of the World Cup final, to the Red Roses’ captain Zoe Aldcroft flinging the trophy skywards as the late summer sun dipped behind the West Stand, casting a golden glow over a widely anticipated and fully deserved victory.
It was joyous and uncomplicated and pretty damned close to the purest form of sport – a group of women pushing each other to excel, and given the means to do it with thorough preparation, and a grand stage on which to showcase it, yet unfettered by the responsibilities and jealousies of big wages and bitter rivalries, and under no huge pressure to win from anywhere but within.
England’s players might even look back on their 33-13 defeat of Canada one day and wonder if this was the best of times before the full encumbrances of professionalism were thrust upon them.
But the world does not stand still, and over the coming week, as the Red Roses go from their celebration party in London’s Battersea Park on Sunday afternoon to TV appearances on The One Show and the rest, you will hear much comment on how to build on this tournament.
Even while the England players were still in their kit on Saturday evening, playfully gatecrashing Gabby Logan and the BBC TV panel at pitchside, then doing the rounds of the media, they were calling for other unions to catch up, rather than just leave the Red Roses in isolation on their world-record run of 33 Test wins.
“Come and take the World Cup off us” seemed to be England’s plea, on the back of their seven consecutive finals and, overall, three wins now in the 10 editions of the competition (1994, 2014 and 2025).
The “Impact ’25” programme jointly administered by the Rugby Football Union (RFU) and UK Government, Sport England and UK Sport, should shore up England’s strength, as it sits alongside the RFU’s allocation in 2022 of £222m over the next 10 years. The money will be used to back Premiership Women’s Rugby (PWR), which is currently the world’s only professional club league – although still at an early stage of development.
England’s head coach John Mitchell will hope for many more players to choose from in future, while his Canada counterpart Kevin Rouet said it’s unsatisfactory for his players to be obliged to play in the PWR or France, while being paid a non-life-changing £400 a week.
World Rugby – which, for the avoidance of doubt, is just the collection of the individual national unions – spent big on this World Cup, giving it a swanky look and feel in eight cities and towns around England.
Within this, as the Canada fly-half Taylor Perry inspiringly put it, the players were “free to be who we want to be”. Players like the Canadian wing Asia Hogan-Rochester, the first known non-binary player to play in a World Cup final, and who flashed to two tries to mark the occasion.
Canada fly-half Taylor Perry in action during the World Cup final (Photo: Getty)But as the six-week tournament progressed, with the 440,000 tickets sold dwarfing the 45,000 for the 2017 version in Ireland, the recurring chat from South Africa and Scotland and Canada and Wales and Fiji, among others, was of where to find the money for travel and training camps and regular competition to raise them to England’s level.
Perhaps this is the moment for women’s rugby to try something different.
We are told younger fans latch onto individuals like England’s shimmering full-back Ellie Kildunne more than the old familiar teams, so maybe an R360-like idea of new entities based on players and entertainment is actually a good fit for women’s rugby to ride the wave of interest and not just follow the same path as the men have been on for 150 years.
The rumour earlier this year that all the Red Roses had at least expressed an interest in R360 shows they are open to change.
There are people out there who recoil at the sight of women and girls smashing into each other. That’s fine, this is not for them.
square RUGBY UNION England crowned Women's Rugby World Cup champions with historic win over Canada
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It’s “for the girls”, as the Red Roses’ catchphrase goes – for the girls who benefit from the exertions and discipline of a physical sport, who want to get together to push boundaries and challenge societal assumptions, and to laugh and make friends and feel good, not bad, about their bodies.
Hannah Botterman’s final summed it all up – scrummaging hard in an England pack who put Canada on the back foot from the early stages, pilfering turnovers with timing and skill, and trotting truculently to the sin-bin for a little too much physicality when she flung the flanker Karen Paquin onto her back.
The 26-year-old Botterman’s build and unapologetic attitude stand as a wonderful counterpoint to the prim-and-slim pigeon-holing of young women in the past.
The question now for these pioneers of a new frontier is which is the best way to take the next step. But, of course, they will be celebrating the achievement of their immediate goal long and loud first.
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