{"id":102234,"date":"2025-08-28T13:24:19","date_gmt":"2025-08-28T13:24:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/102234\/"},"modified":"2025-08-28T13:24:19","modified_gmt":"2025-08-28T13:24:19","slug":"womens-rugby-world-cup-marlie-packer-captains-much-changed-england-against-samoa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/102234\/","title":{"rendered":"Women&#8217;s Rugby World Cup: Marlie Packer captains much-changed England against Samoa"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Utility back Helena Rowland and Claudia Moloney-MacDonald return from injury to start at fly-half and on the left wing respectively.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Jess Breach, who is one score away from 50 international tries, retains her spot after two tries against the USA, as does impressive outside centre Megan Jones.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Jones is joined by Gloucester-Hartpury&#8217;s Jade Shekells in the midfield, with Emma Sing named at full-back.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">In the forwards, lock Lilli Ives Campion and flanker Abi Burton are set for World Cup debuts after being named to start.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Maddie Feaunati starts at number eight against the nation her father Zak played for 13 times.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Samoa, who are fully amateur and ranked 15th in the world, lost their opening game <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/rugby-union\/articles\/c39d2wjldzzo\" class=\"ssrcss-k8mrr8-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">73-0 to Australia.<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Given England played two different teams across this year&#8217;s Women&#8217;s Six Nations and still won a fourth consecutive Grand Slam, they are likely to record a big scoreline in Northampton despite the wholesale changes.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">A bonus-point victory will put Mitchell&#8217;s side in a strong position to qualify for the knockout stages.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">More to follow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Utility back Helena Rowland and Claudia Moloney-MacDonald return from injury to start at fly-half and on the left&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":102235,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,760,85],"class_list":["post-102234","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-rugby","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102234","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=102234"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102234\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/102235"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=102234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=102234"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=102234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}