Players from a Northamptonshire women’s rugby club said they were “absolutely starstruck” to meet members of England’s team ahead of their second Rugby World Cup fixture.<\/p>\n
The Red Roses face Samoa<\/a> at Franklin’s Gardens in Northampton at 17:00 BST on Saturday and are favourites to win the tournament.<\/p>\n On Thursday, players including Zoe Aldcroft, Abby Dow and Emily Scarratt met fans at an event at Daventry Library.<\/p>\n “It feels like we’re in a different world,” said Rachel Kilpatrick, a player with Daventry RFC. “I can’t believe they [the Red Roses] are actually here; it’s been really nice to see them.”<\/p>\n Michelle Loots, who also plays for Daventry, said: “It’s been like a fangirl moment. To go from watching them on the TV to seeing them here, they’re actually real people.”<\/p>\n The event was organised in conjunction with West Northamptonshire Council and saw dozens of young fans queue to meet the England stars.<\/p>\n Winger Abby Dow, said: “I think community events are the most important thing to rugby. Ultimately sport is designed to get kids involved.<\/p>\n “It’s about getting kids active \u2014 just getting muddy knees.<\/p>\n “It’s incredible to come here – not just to inspire people, but they’re also inspiring us.<\/p>\n “It’s a privilege to be here.”<\/p>\n Emily Scarratt, who is playing in a record-equalling fifth Rugby World Cup, said: “I played in 2010 when we last hosted [the World Cup]… the landscape is so different.<\/p>\n “I didn’t think it [women’s rugby] would ever grow like this and we’d be professional; doing events like this [at the library] and packing out stadiums.”<\/p>\n Coverage of England vs Samoa is available on BBC Two and BBC iPlayer<\/a> from 16:35 BST on Saturday, 30 August, with commentary also being broadcast on BBC Radio 5 Sports Extra and BBC Sounds<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Players from a Northamptonshire women’s rugby club said they were “absolutely starstruck” to meet members of England’s team…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":105161,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,760,85],"class_list":["post-105160","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\/105160","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=105160"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105160\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/105161"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=105160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=105160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=105160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}